South Korean ‘comfort women’ database almost complete
A university research institute has been commissioned by the South Korean government to build a comprehensive database of documents related to the “comfort women” issue, Yonhap News Agency reported on Sunday.
According to the report, the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family Affairs in 2012, during the administration of then President Lee Myng Bak, commissioned the Korean History Research Institute of Korea University to set up the database covering domestic and foreign official documents, news articles and records of the victims, among various other items.
Work on the project has entered the final stage, with the completed database slated to be made available on a website in 2019. It marks the first time for records related to women forced to work in Japan’s wartime military brothels to be integrated into a database and disclosed to the public.
According to Yonhap, the research team has collected and surveyed some 80,000 items and extensivelon y indexed them.
Once completed, it is expected to be used extensively in education and civic group activities, according to the report, which said it will be keyword-searchable to enhance usability.
A research professor at the institute who was involved in the project said he was able to obtain the cooperation of domestic and foreign organisations as well as researchers involved in comfort women issues.
According to the current administration’s five-year policy blueprint released in July, a day to commemorate comfort women will be established in 2018, a research centre dedicated to the victims will open the following year, and a related history museum will be set up in 2020.
It is unclear how the current administration is positioning the database among those projects.
The comfort women issue is a source of diplomatic conflict between Tokyo and Seoul as many of the women were from the Korean Peninsula.
