The government will bolster education for school children on Japan’s sexual enslavement of Asian women during World War II to help them better understand the long-standing issue, the education ministry said Friday.
In a report to a special parliamentary committee against the distortion of North Asian history, the ministry said it will seek to have history textbooks for elementary, middle and high schools include more details about the tragic reality of Korean women forced to into sexual servitude for Japanese soldiers.
Currently, there is no mention of the former sex slaves in elementary and middle school textbooks. Texts for Japanese history and world history classes in high school only briefly deal with the issue.
Future textbooks should have clearer descriptions of the forced nature of the sex work and the issues surrounding the victims’ human rights, the ministry said.
The ministry also said it will develop separate teaching materials on the former sex slaves, possibly to be released by the start of the new school year next month, so that teachers can better educate students on the issue.
Historians estimate there were about 200,000 sex slaves from all over Asia. Most of them are believed to have been Korean, though the South Korean government only has 238 registered in its database.
Japan has yet to atone properly for its wartime sexual slavery and has not paid direct compensation to any of the victims.
South Korea has pressed Japan to address the long-running grievances by extending a formal apology and compensating the victims. But Japan has refused to do so, saying the matter was settled by a 1965 treaty that normalized relations between the two countries. (Yonhap)
