From Newsgroup: alt.atheism

Trump Rants About oComfort Womeno While Meeting with Foreign President
It happened while he was speaking with South Korean President Lee Jae-
myung.
President Donald Trump and South Korean President Lee Jae Myung meet at the White House.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

President Donald TrumpAs meeting with South Korean President Lee Jae-myung took an unexpected turn Monday when the U.S. leader decided to bring up the topic of forced prostitution.

The White House meeting spanned several geopolitical issues, including potential unification of South Korea and North Korea, economic partnerships between South Korea and the U.S., as well as South KoreaAs political stability, which has been on shaky ground since former President Yoon Suk
Yeol declared martial law in December.

But then Trump dropped a seemingly unrelated doozy into the afternoon conversation: JapanAs sex-based war crimes.

oThe whole issue of the women. Comfort women,o Trump remarked, seated
beside Lee. oVery specifically, we talked and that was a very big problem
for Korea, not for Japan. Japan was, wanted to go, they want to get on. Andubut Korea was very stuck on that, you understand.o

The term ocomfort womeno was a euphemism coined by the Japanese military to describe women or girls who were forced into sexual slavery by Japanese soldiers during World War II, according to the Association of Asian
Studies. It is estimated that hundreds of thousands of women were
victimized by Japan and forced into military sex slavery during the war,
which amounted to the largest case of government-sponsored human
trafficking in modern history. The continued use of the phrase ocomfort
womeno has been roundly criticized for minimizing the harm and gravity of JapanAs actions.

The topic is still a heavily charged political issue for the two nations, especially as surviving victims seek formal recognition of the atrocities
by Tokyo.

But as Trump attempts to push his numerous ties to child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein into the rearview, itAs no surprise that he doesnAt
understand why South Korea would have a difficult time moving past the
abuse. The president has, after all, been found liable for sexually abusing women in the past.

In 2015, Japan apologized to the South Korean victims and reached an
agreement with the conservative leadership in South Korea at the time to
give 1 billion yenuor $6.8 millionuin reparations.

Regardless, Lee called the matter a oheartbreaking issueo for South Koreans last week, noting that the 2015 arrangement was overy difficult to accepto
for many victims in the country, but that it was nonetheless oundesirable
to overturn it.o
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