“No Different Than the Comfort Women Issue We Raise”: On Lee Jae-myung’s Recent Remarks and Connecting Militarized State Violence, From Palestine to Korea
April 27, 2026
Posted in: Political Education
Last week, South Korean President Lee Jae-myung reposted a video showing IDF soldiers throwing a body off of a building in the occupied West Bank, writing:
“If this is true, then I need to look into what measures were taken [after this incident]. The ‘comfort women’ issue, the Holocaust, and wartime killings we take issue with are no different.”
Despite backlash from conservative and far-right figures, Lee continued in a series of posts on X, labeling Israel’s actions as “anti-human rights and anti-international law” and stating, “No matter what situation, international humanitarian law must be upheld and human dignity must be an uncompromising, top-priority value.”
This marks one of the first times in recent years that a South Korean president has voiced outspoken criticism of the Israeli government and military’s war crimes. In doing so, Lee invoked an enduring national wound: the systematic sexual slavery of women and girls by the Japanese imperial military and the following decades-long denial and erasure by the Japanese goverment.
What President Lee did not say — but what a historic lawsuit filed in South Korean court in September 2025 argues — is that the United States military and South Korean governmentoperated a similar system of sexual violence, trafficking, and human rights abuses for decades. And that both governments worked together to keep it buried.
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