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Dokdo dispute adds support to sex slave rally |
July 17, 2008
Waves of picketing students and photographers jostled around
the Japanese Embassy in
“They [the Japanese] took us away in the middle of the night and put us through
deadly humiliations,” yelled out Lee Yong-soo, a 79-year-old former sex slave
who testified during the U.S. House of Representatives hearings on the issue
last year. “Now, they’re doing the same thing with Dokdo. They’re trying to
take the island away from us.”
It was the women’s 822nd protest. They have held weekly rallies outside the
Japanese Embassy every Wednesday since 1992, after three Korean women forced to
work as sex slaves by the Japanese military during World War II came out in
public for the first time and filed a lawsuit against the Japanese government.
The rally continued for the next 16 years.
The protest yesterday drew a larger crowd as
Present during the rally were local middle school
students and a group of Canadian schoolteachers on a study tour of remnants of
Asian wartime atrocities such as the comfort women and the Nanking Massacre.
“
The Canadian group will participate in compiling a revised version of a
teacher’s guide for the Toronto District School Board, which added a section on
war crimes and post-war issues in
“We came to hear the stories of the grandmas so we can teach their history in
our classrooms,” said George Hall, a retired geography teacher from
Joining the Canadians were over 120 students from
“Hopefully it will refresh their history lessons, and bring them closer to
society,” said Kim Yun-hee, a Chinese writing teacher.
By Park Soo-mee Staff Reporter [myfeast@joongang.co.kr]
http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2892418