MONUMENTAL ROW

Philadelphia Groups Feud Over Plans for Korean ‘Comfort Women’ Statue

Critics say the memorial is “designed to stoke anti-Japan sentiment and contempt for Japanese people.”

Plans for a memorial in Philadelphia commemorating the so-called Korean “comfort women” raped before and during World War II has sparked an intense debate between differing groups in the city. Backers say the bronze statue—which would be installed in Philly’s Queen Village—would highlight an often overlooked atrocity, in which occupying Japanese troops forced Korean women into sexual slavery beginning in the early 1930s and ending with the surrender of Japan in 1945. Detractors of the plan say the memorial, which was preliminarily approved last year by the city’s Art Commission, could provoke hatred toward Japanese people. During a three-hour Zoom meeting Monday, Patrick Dailey, a leader of the Japanese American Association of Greater Philadelphia, said the statue’s installation would see the city “drawn into an issue better handled by the State Department, not cities.” The Association’s lawyer, Edward S. Mazurek, added that he believed the statue is “is designed to stoke anti-Japan sentiment and hatred and contempt for Japanese people.”