[Statement] On the Permanent Installation of the “Comfort Woman” Statue at the Bonn Women’s Museum, Germany

― Memory Cannot Be Privatized: We Oppose the Politicization of Globalized Monuments

On June 4, 2025, a statue symbolizing the issue of Japanese military “comfort women” — often referred to as the “Statue of Peace” — was permanently installed in the courtyard of the Women’s Museum in Bonn, Germany. This statue, which had previously been displayed in Dresden, was moved to private property where it will remain permanently. Although presented as an act of preserving historical memory, this move in practice resembles a form of political containment of memory.

We, the Korea-Japan Reconciliation Initiative, hereby state our position as follows:

1. Is the privatization of “globalized memory” legitimate?

The decision by German authorities to relocate the statue from public space to private property under the guise of political neutrality effectively shifts public responsibility onto private institutions. It conveys a message: “Remember — but don’t be political.” This practice mirrors the pattern seen in the United States, where similar statues have been erected mostly on private properties such as Korean churches and cultural centers.
This signals a new phase in which memory struggles lack public accountability and become politically defanged, confined to so-called “safe zones” of private space.

2. The hierarchy of memory and the pursuit of moral hegemony

The globalization of the comfort woman statue is not merely a gesture of solidarity with women’s rights. It is part of a strategy whereby a specific historical narrative is superimposed upon other nations’ pasts, asserting a universal victimhood in public spaces through moralized diplomacy.
In this case, the Korean narrative of “purity and victimhood” has been juxtaposed with Germany’s own memory of Nazi-era atrocities and gendered violence. What occurs is not true transformation or mutual memory exchange, but appropriation and symbolic layering.
We must ask: Is this genuine transnational solidarity — or a competitive consumption of history?

3. The purity-based victim narrative clashes with Germany’s legal recognition of sex work

Germany is a country that legally recognizes consensual adult sex work as a legitimate form of labor. This socio-legal framework stands in stark contrast to the radical feminist ideology in Korea, which advances an absolutist dichotomy of victim and perpetrator.
In this context, the installation of a statue embodying a “purity-centered” victim narrative in front of the Women’s Museum in Germany does not necessarily align with the mainstream feminist or legal discourse within that country.
Rather, it represents an export of politicized imagery by external actors, resulting in a museumified memory isolated in niche spaces, without robust local dialogue or exchange.

4. Memory must not be sealed in statues — we demand its critical reexamination

Truth cannot be carved in stone. It lives through testimony, counterargument, and open examination.
Once a statue is installed, questioning becomes difficult. That is why we are deeply concerned about the symbolic closure of politicized memory — especially when it is removed from the public arena and relegated to private domains under the logic of convenience or compromise.
This tendency accelerates the transformation of memory into sacralized narratives stripped of public scrutiny.

We must ask:

We do not oppose international discussions on the “comfort women” issue.
However, we insist on questioning the methods, instruments, locations, and political actors behind such efforts.
True reconciliation between Korea and Japan will not come from the proliferation of monuments, but through mutual transformation of understanding.

When discussion is banned in the public square, and memory is allowed only in privatized settings,
we risk hardening historical narratives into mythologized distortions.

Memory must live through critical inquiry based on facts,
and we demand that it returns to the realm of living, political discourse.

June 21, 2025

Korea-Japan Conflict Resolution Solidarity (한일갈등타파연대)