The 10th anniversary ceremony was held on the 29th local time in Glendale, USA, where the statue was first erected overseas.
At the event, Kim Hyun-jung, CEO of Comfort Women’s Action for Reparations and Education (CARE), said, “Just as we have steadfastly defended the Girl Statue in the face of the Japanese government’s continued denial of history over the past decade, we will continue to need the attention and support of many people.”
The Glendale Girl Statue was unveiled on July 30, 2013, replicating the one opposite the Embassy of Japan in Seoul.
Glendale was the first city in the world to have a statue symbolizing the history of Japanese military comfort women.
At the time, Korean American civic organizations, led by the Kaju Korean American Forum, pushed for a memorial to the comfort women, and the City of Glendale, which had a deep understanding of the comfort women issue, provided public land for the statue.
Previously, the city of Glendale had adopted a city council resolution in 2007 that echoed the comfort women resolution passed by the U.S. House of Representatives and designated “Japanese Military Comfort Women’s Day” (July 30) in 2012.
But there have been many twists and turns since the girls’ statue was erected, including constant pressure from the Japanese side to remove it.
In 2014, a petition to remove the statue was posted on a petition site run by the White House and garnered more than 100,000 signatures, and members of a Japanese far-right organization filed a lawsuit against the city of Glendale to remove the statue, which went to court for three years.
The Japanese side ultimately lost, allowing the statue to remain in place, but Kim says the city can’t let its guard down.
The Kaju Korean-American Forum, which led the effort to erect the girl statue, 카지노사이트넷 renamed itself “Comfort Women Action” in 2019 and has been building solidarity with community organizations of all backgrounds, not just Korean-Americans.