Two former South Korean "comfort women" canceled their planned Friday meeting with Nippon Ishin no Kai (Japan Restoration Party) coleader Toru Hashimoto, saying through a representative that they did not want to become his political pawns.
Kim Bok Dong, 87, and Kil Won Ok, 85, are currently traveling around Japan and speaking about their experiences as sex slaves for the Imperial Japanese Army. They are due to address a public symposium Saturday in Osaka and had been expected to meet with Hashimoto, the city's mayor, to call him out over his May 13 remarks that the wartime comfort women system, which was believed started in the early 1930s during Japan's conquest of China, had been necessary.
But as the domestic and international backlash against Hashimoto escalated, he refused to apologize for his position, even as pressure on him to cancel the meeting from members of his own party grew. On Thursday, he insisted the meeting with Kim and Kil was still on.