S.Koreans' harassment against Japanese children in Glendale
”A true picture of Koreans' harassment of Japanese children in Glendale ”
In Glendale city, California,the Western United States, the Korean residents erected the "Comfort woman" statue in last July. Their purpose was to highlight the problem of comfort woman to the world. 13 Japanese local assembly members visited the United States this January to deal with the aggressive action against the Japanese side's intention that the problem was needed to more re-examination.
After returning to Japan, in February 10, the local assembly member group reported the details of the situation of Japanese residents and so forth in a debrief meeting in the halls of Parliament. According to it, there were many stories that are hard to believe in Glendale. Some Korean children spat in food Japanese children were eating. They all are in the local school.
Yoshiko Matsu-ura, a city council member of Suginami Ward, fronted for the backers of the group, said with exasperation that..
"Since the statue was built, the number of harassment cases from Korean to Japanese residents has increased rapidly. I had an interviews with a few Japanese there. They spoke under the condition of anonymity because Koreans become overly sensitive to what Japanese talked about to Japanese media, and sometimes they even tried to identify the person who provided unfavorable information for them. Their harassment must be sonasty. Koreans targeted especially Japanese children. When a Korean child found a Japanese child on a street he/she spat on him/her saying, "Japan was a mean country that made Koreans sex-slaves." Allegedly this repeated every day. One of them just suffered and said, "Bad blood runs in my body!" as he banged his/her own head on the desk. Other child begged the parents not to call his/her name in Japanese outside for fear of Koreans eyes."
In Glendale, the population of the Korean residents is 12000 of entire 200,000, while the Japanese one is only 100, by far smaller than the Koreans' one. The Japanese residents are forced to feel contrary.
The city council member Matsura herself had an experience with fear of Korean residents, and revealed the case,
"We just wanted to tell the city council members of Glendale to remove the words of "sex-slave of Japanese army" on inscription of the statue because it was not true and the statue leaded to the potential of conflict between Japan and S.Korea " However, we were denied access to the mayor nor the city council members, instead, what was waiting for us in the city council hall was a press corps consist of 100 Koreans. They closed about us, frequently snarled at us with a similar icy look, 'Why are you here?' I actually felt a feeling of fear" She said there was a Korean media that pointed a camera at them and even reported "This is violence by a Japanese conservative group!"
(from the article in the March, 6 issue of Asahi Geinou)
(translated by a member of OFJ, sorry for error in translation)
