SEOUL: Japan said on Wednesday any attempt by South Korea to revise a 2015 deal meant to have resolved a row over “comfort women” forced to work in Japan’s wartime brothels would make relations “unmanageable” after Seoul said the agreement had failed.
The two US allies, which share a bitter history including Japanese colonization, are key to international efforts to rein in North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs that it pursues in defiance of UN Security Council resolutions.
South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha apologized for the controversial deal on Wednesday, as a panel investigating the negotiations leading up to the agreement unveiled its results.
The investigation concluded that the dispute over the comfort women, a Japanese euphemism for the thousands of girls and women, many of them Korean, forced to work in wartime brothels, could not be “fundamentally resolved” because the victims’ demand for legal compensation had not been met.
South Korea wants Japan to take legal responsibility and provide due compensation.
Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono said the 2015 settlement, which includes a 1 billion yen ($8.8 million) fund to help the victims, resulted from “legitimate negotiations,” warning any amendment may complicate relations.
“If (South Korea) tries to revise the agreement that is already being implemented, that would make Japan’s ties with South Korea unmanageable and it would be unacceptable,” Kono said in a statement.
Kang apologized for “giving wounds of the heart to the victims, their families, civil society that support them and all other people because the agreement failed to sufficiently reflect a victim-oriented approach, which is the universal standard in resolving human rights issues.”
Under the deal, endorsed by South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s predecessor and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Japan apologized to former comfort women and provided the fund to help them.
They agreed the issue would be “irreversibly resolved” if both fulfilled their obligations.
Tokyo says the matter of compensation for the women was settled under a 1965 treaty. It says that in 2015, it agreed to provide the funds to help them heal “psychological wounds.”
The South Korean government will review the result of the investigation and translate it into policy after consulting victims and civic groups that support them, Kang said.
The comfort women issue has been a regular cause for contention between Japan and neighbors China and North and South Korea since the war. Japan colonized the Korean peninsula between 1910 and 1945 and occupied parts of China before and after the war.
“(The Moon government) has said it will seek a two-track policy by separately dealing with the comfort women issue and the relationship in the face of North Korea’s threats, but Japan may not agree with that,” Lee Sung-hwan, a professor of Japanese studies in Keimyung University in South Korea, told Reuters.
Japan wants South Korea to remove statues near the Japanese embassy in Seoul and the Japanese consulate in Busan city commemorating Korean comfort women. Seoul says the memorials were erected by civic groups and therefore out of its reach.
According to the investigation, however, the sides struck a separate, secret deal in which South Korea promised to persuade the groups to relocate the statues, provide no support for their overseas statue-raising campaign and refrain from calling the women “sex slaves” on the world stage.
In 2014, the UN Human Rights Committee requested Tokyo to clarify the “comfort women” euphemism, with an independent expert on the panel calling for it to be replaced with “enforced sex slaves.”
“Such an issue of universal value and historical awareness as that of comfort women cannot be resolved through short-term diplomatic negotiations and a political bargain,” said Oh Tai-kyu, a former journalist who led the investigation.
Andrew Horvat, a visiting professor at Josai International University in Japan, said that the pact was flawed from the beginning because it failed to produce real reconciliation.
“The agreement was not reconciliation, but an agreement not to talk about it anymore,” Horvat said.
Japan says ties at risk if South Korea messes with 2015 ‘comfort women’ deal
Japan says ties at risk if South Korea messes with 2015 ‘comfort women’ deal
Indonesia court says vote threshold for presidential candidates not legally binding
JAKARTA: Indonesia’s Constitutional Court on Thursday said a law setting a minimum vote level before political parties could nominate a presidential candidate was not legally binding, which could potentially lead to a wider slate of nominees running in 2029.
The current law requires parties to win 20 percent of the vote, whether individually or through a coalition, at a legislative election to put forward a presidential candidate. It was challenged by a group of university students who argued it limited the rights of voters and smaller parties.
Chief Justice Suhartoyo granted the petition, saying the threshold “had no binding legal power,” but the ruling did not specify if the requirement should be abolished or lowered.
All political parties should be allowed to nominate a candidate, judge Saldi Isra said.
Rifqi Nizamy Karsayuda, the head of the parliamentary commission overseeing elections, told local media that lawmakers would take action following the ruling, calling it “final and binding.”
Indonesia’s law minister did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the ruling.
Arya Fernandes, political analyst at Center for Strategic and International Studies, welcomed the ruling as it allowed smaller parties to nominate a candidate and lessened their dependence on bigger parties.
Arya said lawmakers could still make revisions to the law that would limit the ruling’s impact as the court did not abolish the vote threshold.
Indonesia’s presidential elections are held every five years. The most recent was held last year and won convincingly by President Prabowo Subianto, who took office in October.
Thursday’s ruling comes after the same court lowered a similar threshold for regional positions such as governor and mayor to under 10 percent of the vote from 20 percent in August last year.
After parties supporting Prabowo and outgoing president Joko Widodo sought to reverse changes to the ruling, thousands took to the streets to protest against what they said was a government effort to stifle opposition.
In a separate ruling on Thursday, the court limited the use of artificial intelligence to “overly manipulate” images of election candidates, saying manipulated images “can compromise the voter’s ability to make an informed decision.”
Russian bomb attack kills one in southern Ukraine
- A Russian bomb attack on Ukraine’s southern Zaporizhzhia region has killed one person, local authorities said Thursday
KYIV: A Russian bomb attack on Ukraine’s southern Zaporizhzhia region has killed one person, local authorities said Thursday.
Moscow’s forces are trying to seize full control of the frontline region, which it claimed to have annexed in 2022, months after invading.
Russia fired 11 guided aerial bombs on the village of Stepnogorsk, just a few kilometers from the front line, late on Wednesday.
“A five-story building was destroyed. A man was killed. Rescuers removed his body from under the rubble,” Zaporizhzhia’s Ukrainian governor Ivan Fedorov said on Telegram.
The strike comes amid an escalation in aerial attacks, including Russian drone strikes on the center of Kyiv that killed two people in the early hours of New Year’s Day.
Ukraine is fearing a possible renewed Russian offensive toward the regional capital of Zaporizhzhia, around 35 kilometers (22 miles) from the front line and still under Ukrainian control.
Bangladesh court again rejects bail for Hindu leader who led rallies
DHAKA: A court in southeastern Bangladesh on Thursday rejected a plea for bail by a jailed Hindu leader who led large rallies in the Muslim-majority country demanding better security for minority groups.
Krishna Das Prabhu faces charges of sedition after he led huge rallies in the southeastern city of Chattogram. Hindu groups say there have been thousands of attacks against Hindus since early August, when the secular government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was overthrown.
Authorities did not produce Prabhu at the hearing during which Chattogram Metropolitan Sessions Judge Saiful Islam rejected the bail plea, according to Public Prosecutor Mofizul Haque Bhuiyan. Security was tight, with police and soldiers guarding the court.
Apurba Kumar Bhattacharjee, a lawyer representing Prabhu, said they would appeal the decision.
The court rejected an earlier request for bail made while Prabhu did not have lawyers. Lawyers who sought to represent him at that hearing said they were threatened or intimidated, and many of them are facing charges related to the death of a Muslim lawyer when Prabhu was arrested in Bangladesh’s capital, Dhaka, in November.
For Thursday’s hearing, 11 lawyers traveled from Dhaka, arriving and leaving with a security escort.
Hindu groups and other minority groups in Bangladesh and abroad have criticized the interim government led by Nobel peace laureate Muhammad Yunus for undermining their security. Yunus and his supporters said that reports of attacks on Hindus and other groups since August have been exaggerated.
Prabhu’s arrest came as tensions spiked following reports of the desecration of the Indian flag in Bangladesh, with some burning it and others laying it on the floor for people to step on. Protesters in India responded in kind, attacks on Hindus in Bangladesh.
Prabhu is a spokesman for the Bangladesh Sammilito Sanatan Jagaran Jote group. He was also associated with the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, widely known as the Hare Krishna movement.
Truck bearing Daesh flag rams New Year’s revelers in New Orleans, killing 15
- Driver identified as Shamsud-Din Jabbar, from Texas, who was deployed to Afghanistan from 2009 to 2010
- The FBI said a Daesh flag was found on the truck. It is working to determine his potential associations with terror groups
NEW ORLEANS: A US Army veteran driving a pickup truck that bore the flag of the Daesh group wrought carnage on New Orleans’ raucous New Year’s celebration, killing 15 people as he steered around a police blockade and slammed into revelers before being shot dead by police.
The FBI said it is investigating the attack early Wednesday as a terrorist act and does not believe the driver acted alone. Investigators found guns and what appeared to be an improvised explosive device in the vehicle, along with other devices elsewhere in the city’s famed French Quarter.
The rampage turned festive Bourbon Street into a macabre mayhem of maimed victims, bloodied bodies and pedestrians fleeing for safety inside nightclubs and restaurants. In addition to the dead, dozens of people were hurt. A college football playoff game at the nearby Superdome was postponed until Thursday.
Zion Parsons, 18, of Gulfport, Mississippi, said he saw the truck “barreling through, throwing people like in a movie scene, throwing people into the air.”
“Bodies, bodies all up and down the street, everybody screaming and hollering,” said Parsons, whose friend Nikyra Dedeaux was among the people killed.
“This is not just an act of terrorism. This is evil,” New Orleans Police Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick said.
The driver “defeated” safety measures in place to protect pedestrians, Kirkpatrick said, and was “hell-bent on creating the carnage and the damage that he did.”
The FBI identified the driver as Shamsud-Din Jabbar, 42, a US citizen from Texas, and said it is working to determine his potential associations with terrorist organizations.
“We do not believe that Jabbar was solely responsible,” FBI Assistant Special Agent in Charge Alethea Duncan said at a news conference.
Investigators found multiple improvised explosives, including two pipe bombs that were concealed within coolers and wired for remote detonation, according to a Louisiana State Police intelligence bulletin obtained by The Associated Press.
The bulletin, relying on preliminary information gathered soon after the attack, also said surveillance footage showed three men and a woman placing one of the devices, but federal officials did not immediately confirm that detail and it wasn’t clear who they were or what connection they had to the attack, if any.
Jabbar drove a rented pickup truck onto a sidewalk, going around a police car that was positioned to block vehicular traffic, authorities. A barrier system meant to prevent vehicle attacks was being repaired in preparation for the Super Bowl in February.
Jabbar was killed by police after he exited the truck and opened fire on responding officers, Kirkpatrick said. Three officers returned fire. Two were shot and are in stable condition.
Investigators recovered a handgun and AR-style rifle, according to a law enforcement official who was not authorized to discuss the investigation publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Deadly explosions also rocked Honolulu and Las Vegas, though authorities haven’t said if they’re related to the New Orleans attack.
A photo circulated among law enforcement officials showed a bearded Jabbar wearing camouflage next to the truck after he was killed. The intelligence bulletin obtained by the AP said he was wearing a ballistic vest and helmet. The flag of the Daesh group was on the truck’s trailer hitch, the FBI said.
“For those people who don’t believe in objective evil, all you have to do is look at what happened in our city early this morning,” US Sen. John Kennedy, a Louisiana Republican, said. “If this doesn’t trigger the gag reflex of every American, every fair-minded American, I’ll be very surprised.”
Jabbar joined the Army in 2007, serving on active duty in human resources and information technology and deploying to Afghanistan from 2009 to 2010, the service said. He transferred to the Army Reserve in 2015 and left in 2020 with the rank of staff sergeant.
Hours after the attack, several coroner’s office vans were parked on the corner of Bourbon and Canal streets, cordoned off by police tape with crowds of dazed tourists standing around, some trying to navigate their luggage through the labyrinth of blockades.
Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry urged people to avoid the area, which remained an active crime scene.
“We looked out our front door and saw caution tape and dead silence and it’s eerie,” said Tessa Cundiff, an Indiana native who moved to the French Quarter a few years ago. “This is not what we fell in love with, it’s sad.”
Nearby, life went on as normal in the city known to some for a motto that translates to “let the good times roll.” At a cafe a block from where the truck came to rest, people crowded in for breakfast as upbeat pop music played. Two blocks away, people drank at a bar, seemingly as if nothing happened.
President Joe Biden, speaking to reporters in Delaware, said he felt “anger and frustration” over the attack but that he would refrain from further comment until more is known.
“My heart goes out to the victims and their families who were simply trying to celebrate the holiday,” Biden said in a statement. “There is no justification for violence of any kind, and we will not tolerate any attack on any of our nation’s communities.”
The attack is the latest example of a vehicle being used as a weapon to carry out mass violence, a trend that has alarmed law enforcement officials and that can be difficult to protect against.
If confirmed as Daesh-inspired, the attack would represent the deadliest such assault on US soil in years. FBI officials have repeatedly warned about an elevated international terrorism threat due to the Israel-Hamas war.
In the last year, the FBI has disrupted other potential attacks inspired by the militant group, including in October when agents arrested an Afghan man in Oklahoma accused of plotting an Election Day attack targeting large crowds.
South Korea police raid Jeju Air, Muan airport over fatal plane crash
- The conversion of data from the Jeju Air 7C2216 cockpit voice recorder to audio file is expected to be completed by Friday
- All 181 people on board the Jeju Air jet were killed on Sunday when crashed at Muan International Airport in the country’s southwest
SEOUL: South Korean police said on Thursday they had raided Jeju Air and Muan International Airport as part of its investigation into a passenger jet crash that killed 179 people on Sunday.
A Jeju Air spokesperson said it is checking the situation.
South Korea’s acting President Choi Sang-mok said on Thursday immediate action must be taken if a special inspection of all Boeing 737-800 aircraft operated in the country finds any issues as authorities ramp up a probe into Sunday’s deadly air crash.
The conversion of data from the Jeju Air 7C2216 cockpit voice recorder to audio file should be completed by Friday, Choi told a disaster management meeting, which could provide critical information on the final minutes of the doomed flight.
All 175 passengers and four of six crew members were killed on Sunday when the Jeju Air jet belly-landed at Muan International Airport in the country’s southwest and slammed into an earth-and-concrete embankment, bursting into flames.
Two crew members, located near the tail of the Boeing 737-800, survived.
“As there’s great public concern about the same aircraft model involved in the accident, the transport ministry and relevant organizations must conduct a thorough inspection of operation maintenance, education, and training,” Choi said.
Choi’s comments at the start of the meeting were provided by his office.
Questions by air safety experts on what led to the deadly explosion have focused on the embankment designed to prop up navigation equipment that they said may have been built too close to the end of the runway.
The aircraft’s flight data recorder, which sustained some damage, is being taken to the United States for analysis in cooperation with the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).
Investigators from the NTSB, US Federation Aviation Administration and the maker of the aircraft, Boeing, are in South Korea to help probe the worst air disaster in the country.
Choi asked no effort be spared in helping the families of the victims as the remains of those killed are handed over them. He also asked the police to take action against anyone posting “malicious” messages and fake news on social media related to the disaster.
