The so-called "Comfort Women" Problem and the State's Responsibility to Protect the Human Rights

Abstract

Before and during the Second World War, the Japanese army kidnapped women and girls, mostly from Korea peninsula. These women and girls, so called “Comfort Women”, were transported to the Comfort Stations, raped by an officer first, and raped by several dozens of soldiers in a queue continuously. According to the testimonies of Comfort Women Victims, when they resisted this serving or showed an unsatisfactory attitude, they were beaten or tortured by the sword, killed, or sometimes buried alive. Most of them were killed or abandoned, and only few women survived. However, after they came back home, they suffered enormous physical and psychological disease, and also lived isolated from their family and the society. In this article, in order to review the Comfort women’s legal problems, I dealt with the responsibility of Republic of Korea, Japan and international community with respect to the duty to protect the human rights of Comfort Women Victims. In the first part, I introduced and evaluated the decision of the Constitutional Court on August 30, 2011, which ruled that a certain failure of legal obligation on the part of the Korean Government was unconstitutional. I think that in this decision the constitutional issue of the State’s duty to protect the basic rights of the Comfort Women Victims was explained pretty well, but the State’s duty should have been dealt with from another point of view, the responsibility for State’s Absence. In the second part, the responsibility of Japan for the crime against humanity was dealt with. The last part focused on the responsibility of International Community, especially to have had to open War Crime Tribunal to punish the war criminals after World War II.