China’s devaluation of its currency is expected to have a positive impact on the South Korean economy if it leads to increased exports for Beijing, Seoul’s finance minister said Wednesday.
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Documents about the activists at that time and how they were tortured are exhibited at the history museum.
That lingering resentment is a main reason why many were closely watching Abe’s speech, to see how he far he would go in emulating earlier Japanese leaders who have spelled out Japan’s remorse for its aggression and the country’s promise to reject colonialism.
He told the U.S. Congress in April that Japan started its postwar path “bearing in mind feelings of deep remorse over the war”, and acknowledged that “our actions brought suffering to the peoples in Asian countries“. “I don’t feel he is responsible for the statement”, Morita said.
Protesters complained they had been denied justice by Japan and abandoned by the Philippines government, which has sided with Tokyo in territorial disputes with China in the South China Sea.
“How about how Japan treats its history of aggression in textbooks?” said one user, referencing the toning down of history lessons under Abe’s administration.
The Korean Council for Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan, a civic organization, has held the Wednesday demonstrations since 1992 to demand Tokyo officially apologize and compensate the Korean women who were forced to serve as sex slaves for the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II, euphemistically known as comfort women.
But he has also made clear he wants to applaud Japan’s post-war peaceful record and outline its future role as an active player on the global stage.
Abe is part of a right-leaning movement that thinks those rules are still too harsh, says Gingold. Thousands people have taken to the streets of Seoul, demanding an official apology and compensation from the Japanese government.88-year-old Yi Ok-Seon showed a CCTV reporter a scar she said she got when a Japanese soldier slashed her arm with a sword seventy years ago.
Japan “caused much harm to various countries, largely in Asia, through a reckless war”, it said.
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Regarding World War II, Abe expressed intentions to inherit “as a whole” the statement issued by then Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama to mark the 50th anniversary of the end of the war as well as the statement issued by then Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi on the 60th anniversary of the end of the war. On August. 12, 80-year-old Choi Hyun-yeol self-immolated at a weekly protest in support of comfort women outside the Japanese Embassy in Seoul.
