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Japan asks US to remove memorial to Korean sex slaves

By IANS,

Washington : A team of Japanese officials recently visited New York to ask the US to remove a plaque outside a public library that serves as a memorial to Korean sex slaves captured by Japan during World War II.

The Japanese officials visited Palisades Park last month, after the area installed in 2010 a memorial to thousands of Korean women that were enslaved by the Japanese army during the World War II, the Daily Mail reported.

The plaque reads: “In memory of the more than 200,000 women and girls who were abducted by the armed forces of the government of imperial Japan. Known as ‘comfort women’, they endured human rights violations that no peoples should leave unrecognized. Let us never forget the horrors of crimes against humanity.”

The town — where more than half of the 20,000 residents are of Korean descent — said it was the first such dedication to the so-called “Comfort Women” and refused to accept the Japanese officials’ request.

After the war, many of the women were brutally slaughtered and their story was first known in 1991, the report said.