As an Indonesian student participating in an exchange program in Korea, I have had the opportunity to explore various parts of Seoul, including the area around Ewha Station, where I currently stay. Near my dorm, I often pass by a park featuring a statue that caught my attention, the Statue of Peace. At first, I knew nothing about it, but I always wondered about its significance and why it was placed there.

After some research, I discovered that the Statue of Peace commemorates the victims of the “comfort women” system during World War II. The term comfort women refers to thousands of young women, primarily from Korea but also from other countries including China, the Philippines, Indonesia, and the Netherlands, who were forcibly taken and sexually enslaved by the Japanese Imperial Army in military brothels, known as "comfort stations."

For decades after the war, this issue remained largely unspoken due to social stigma and political pressure. It wasn’t until the early 1990s that survivors, led by Kim Hak-sun, one of the first women to publicly testify, began to demand justice and recognition. Their voices led to international attention, with human rights organizations like the United Nations and Amnesty International recognizing the issue as a serious war crime and a violation of human rights.

The first Statue of Peace was erected in 2011 in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul to commemorate the 1,000th protest by former comfort women and their supporters, who had been demonstrating every Wednesday since 1992. These protests, known as the Wednesday Demonstrations, were organized to demand a formal apology, legal compensation, and acknowledgment from the Japanese government. The statue, designed by artists Kim Seo-kyung and Kim Eun-sung, portrays a young girl sitting on a chair with a solemn expression, symbolizing the innocent victims. Since then, many replicas of the Statue of Peace have been installed across Korea and worldwide, including in the United States, as a tribute to the victims and a reminder of the unresolved historical dispute.

The Statue of Peace remains a source of political tension between Korea and Japan. While Korea demands a full acknowledgment of war crimes, an official apology, and legal compensation, the Japanese government argues that the issue was settled in past agreements, including the 2015 Comfort Women Agreement between South Korea and Japan. However, many survivors and human rights activists rejected the agreement, stating that it lacked sincerity and failed to properly address their demands.

Japan has repeatedly pressured Korea and other countries to remove the statues, arguing that they damage diplomatic relations. Some statues abroad, such as those in the U.S. and Germany, have faced opposition and diplomatic interventions from the Japanese government, but they remain standing due to local support.

This statue serves as a powerful reminder of their suffering and a call for justice and historical awareness. For Indonesians, this issue is also significant because Indonesian women were among the victims of the Japanese military’s forced sexual slavery. Many were taken from Java, Sumatra, and other parts of the archipelago, and their suffering remains a largely untold chapter of history. However, despite its importance, many international students and visitors, like myself, are unaware of its history and meaning.

That is why I am calling for more accessible information about the Statue of Peace in public spaces, especially in areas where the statue is placed. This could include multilingual plaques or QR codes that provide historical context in English, Indonesian, and other languages. By doing so, more people can learn about this important part of Korean and global history, fostering understanding and empathy among visitors from different backgrounds.