A Statue of Peace (Image courtesy of Yonhap)
SEOUL, Jun. 19 (Korea Bizwire) — A girl statue symbolizing the victims of Japan’s wartime sexual slavery, euphemistically called “comfort women,” will be erected in Italy for the first time, a local activist group said Wednesday.
The statue, dubbed a Statue of Peace or comfort women statue, will be unveiled to the public in Stintino, a small city on the Italian island of Sardinia, at 11 a.m. (local time) on Saturday, according to the Korean Council for Justice and Remembrance for the Issues of Military Sexual Slavery.
The Stintino statue will be the second to be installed on public land in Europe after the first one set up in Berlin, Germany, in 2020, the council said, noting it will also be the 14th statue to be erected overseas after the first one installed in Glendale, California, in 2013.
The statue’s location is on a beach about 200 meters from Stintino’s city hall, the council said, adding the area is visited by many tourists.
The council said it proposed the construction of the statue to the Italian city in December last year, and the mayor immediately welcomed the proposal.
The statue symbolizes 200,000 Asian women, mostly Koreans, who were forcibly sent to front-line brothels to work as sex slaves for Japanese troops during World War II. The sexual slavery victims are one of the many thorny issues stemming from the 1910-45 period, when Korea was a Japanese colony.
(Yonhap)
