A group of 117 South Korean women filed a lawsuit directly accusing, for the first time, the United States Army of illegally promoting prostitution and of being the “real culprit” of decades of sexual exploitation and systematic abuse, the director of an involved NGO explained to EFE this Thursday.
The plaintiffs, former sex workers in areas near U.S. military bases in South Korea, are claiming individual compensation of 10 million won ($7,190) and official recognition that U.S. military authorities orchestrated a system that operated from the 1950s.
The lawsuit also includes the South Korean government, as the US bases were jointly managed by the South Korean government and US forces, at the request of the US side, according to the plaintiffs’ press release.
The document accuses both parties of having tolerated and promoted prostitution, imposing venereal disease controls through arbitrary detentions and coercive medical treatments, which in some cases proved fatal.
Some of the “comfort women”, a euphemism commonly used in South Korea to refer to these victims of exploitation, reported that they were trafficked for the purpose of sexual entertainment of American soldiers, and a large part were minors.
“This trial should serve to make visible to the international community the illegal acts and structural sexual exploitation carried out by US troops. The history of women and girls exploited by states and armies must be eradicated,” Ko Mira, director of the NGO Saeumteo, part of the coalition supporting the lawsuit, explained to EFE.
In 2022, the South Korean Supreme Court already ordered the country’s government to compensate dozens of victims. However, according to Ko, that ruling only partially acknowledged state responsibility.
“We see a high probability that the court will rule in favor of the plaintiffs, because in the previous litigation the responsibility of the South Korean state was already recognized and there are official records that prove the intervention of the US military authorities,” said Ko.
The coalition of civil organizations that supports the lawsuit considers that the process goes beyond individual compensations.
“Women say over and over that the real culprit was the United States and the military bases. This is the first historic lawsuit that raises their direct responsibility,” she added.
The process could drag on for years, he said, as happened with previous cases. However, the plaintiffs, many of them elderly, insist that the U.S. Army must acknowledge its illegal acts as soon as possible, apologize, and repair their suffering.
The process must be processed before the Central Court of Seoul, since under the Agreement on the Status of Armed Forces in South Korea (SOFA) claims arising from acts of US military personnel on duty must be processed according to South Korean law, with the Asian country as the defendant. EFE
