Some Koreans including members of far-right conservative groups held a rally in front of the Statue of Peace (“Girl of Peace”) erected in Berlin, Germany claiming that comfort women were not victims of wartime sexual violence. This triggered a counterdemonstration in Germany, in which German and even Japanese people criticized the conservative Koreans.

According to Joo Ok-soon, head of the Mothers’ Unit, and Yonhap News on June 26 (local time), four people in “solidarity to eradicate comfort women fraud,” including Joo; Kim Byung-heon, director of the Korean History Textbook Research Institute; Lee Woo-yeon, a research fellow at the Naksungdae Institute of Economic Research; and Kenji Yoshida, held a demonstration from this day until June 30 in front of the “Girl of Peace” statue in Berlin criticizing efforts by South Koreans to raise the comfort women issue.

This day, Joo posted a picture of her and other rally participants engaging in the demonstration in front of the statue. The picture showed Joo standing behind a placard with the words, “Stop Comfort Women Fraud!” in English and Korean. She was also holding a sign with the words, “Comfort women are not victims of wartime sexual violence.”

Earlier, the Japanese newspaper, the Sankei Shimbun reported that Joo and the other participants formed an organization named Solidarity to Eradicate Comfort Women Fraud last January. They arrived in Berlin on June 25. During their stay, they submitted a statement and a written opinion to the Berlin City Council and tried to hold a press conference and meet with the representatives of the Korea Verband, the civic group in Germany that led efforts to erect the Statue of Peace. The Sankei Shimbun described them as “unexpected reinforcements” for Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who tried to tear down the statue.

Earlier, the Statue of Peace was erected in Birkenstraße in the Berlin-Mitte district on September 25, 2020. The Japanese government protested the display of the statue to the German authorities, and in October that year, the Mitte district office ordered the statue be removed. However, Korea Verband filed a lawsuit, and the clearance order was postponed. The inscription on the statue states, “During the Second World War, the Japanese military forced women in Asia and the Pacific into sexual slavery,” but Japan argued that this was different from fact.

Reportedly, in Germany, there was also a counter-rally opposing the one by Joo. According to Yonhap News, around a hundred participants including elderly women opposing far-right civic groups and members of the women’s association Courage, international members of the German Metal Workers’ Union, young members of the Mitte district Social Democratic Party, and members of the Korea Verband, which promoted the Statue of Peace in Berlin, held a counterdemonstration across from the one by the conservatives. They shouted slogans like “Go home,” and “Study more” in German and in Korean.

A Japanese women’s group in Berlin is known to have joined the counterprotest this day. In an interview with Yonhap News, the representative of the group described the rally by the Korean conservative groups as “too horrible” and “insulting” and argued, “There are thousands of evidence on what the comfort women suffered.”