ORIGINALLY ON NYT, SEOUL’S COLONIAL BOOMERANG The issue of comfort women is devastating. Let’s leave it there. Because there hasn’t been a single article that dealt the issue with a proper perspective it deserves. It was Americans who decided to give Japan a slack in American military court, not Asians nor Europeans, both the victims of “Comfort Women” system. It was Americans who decided give peace to a country full of statutory-rapists or a.k.a. Johns.

In other words, we are not accustomed to Asian “colonial-card” as much we would be to Black “race-card,” to which, I might add, the author must be alluding to. We don’t talk of African nations and their capitals playing “colonial card” against Europeans. We know the reality of centuries of human-trafficking and slavery had done to the continent. We simply accepted everything and never looked back. We left them barren so that they can never rise up against us.

South Korea is probably one of the few colonized states that were able to come back as a “developed” country with working infrastructure. Their existence seems to question our common sense. Shouldn’t they get over it as we had done? We are all cool with two World Wars and Cold War, but why not Korea? Again, ask yourself. The system that let systematic rape run wild was not theirs. It was American. The war made us the jury, the judge, and the executioner of the people behind the Comfort Women system, but we decided it was best for the public to let it all go, contrary to what Tom Hollander might have said on the matter.

“Colonial Boomerang” is not thrown by Seoul. They don’t have one. When was the last time Seoul was the political powerhouse of the region? To argue Korea is playing “colonial-card” is the most disgusting accusation I’ve ever seen since the imperialism itself.