Korea PR expert puts up ‘sex slavery’ posters in Japan

Korea PR expert Seo Kyoung-duk, a professor at Sungshin Women’s University, poses in front of the comfort women posters he put up in Japanese universities, Monday. / Yonhap

Korea PR expert Seo Kyoung-duk, a professor at Sungshin Women’s University, has put up posters in Japanese universities calling for their apology for Korean “comfort women” who were forced into prostitution for the Japanese army during World War II.

Seo and some 50 Korean students studying in Japan covered walls in nearly 40 major Japanese universities with 10,000 posters regarding wartime sex slavery issues.

“We have stuck posters up for the last three weeks to press Japan to apologize for its wartime sex slavery,” the freelance Korean publicist said Monday. “There are two kinds of posters. One is titled ‘Do you remember?’ and the other is called ‘Do you hear?’”

According to the professor, the posters were put up on notice boards and in cafeterias and dormitories at the University of Tokyo, Kyoto University, Osaka University, Okayama University among others.

“Do you remember?” contains a picture of former German Prime Minister Willy Brandt kneeling down at the monument to the victims of the Warsaw Ghetto on Dec. 7, 1970. The poster reads, wrongly stating the year of the former prime minister’s act, “Willy Brandt’s apology to Poland in 1971 contributed greatly to settling the peace in Europe. Now in 2012, Korean comfort women are still waiting for Japan’s apology from the bottom of its heart.”

Seo also put the poster in the New York Times in May as well as on a digital billboard in New York City’s Times Square since the beginning of this month.

“Do you hear?” contains sentences like “Do you hear them? They are victims who were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese army during the World War II,” with pictures of the surviving comfort women’s regular Wednesday rally in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul as the background.

The Wall Street Journal had placed the poster as a full-page advertisement in December last year.

The professor said, “We decided to report the issues to Japanese university students who will be leading the nation in the future, rather than to its government, which has gone against common sense.”

Seo tweeted “I thank all Korean students who worked together on this. We will keep pressuring the Japanese government.”

Meanwhile, the well-known publicist was also tapped as the first principal of “Dokdo School” last Wednesday. The educational program is expected to be held at the Independence Hall of Korea in Cheonan, South Chungcheong Province, from March next year. <The Korea Times/Jun Ji-hye>