By / MOOK Scenic Spots Editorial Team Compilation and Report
Following South Korea, the United States, and the Philippines, Tainan City has also installed Taiwan’s first comfort women statue on the vacant lot next to the Kuomintang Tainan City Party Headquarters near the LIN Hall, and chose International Comfort Women Day on August 14th to invite former President Ma Ying-jeou to preside over the unveiling ceremony.
(Photo / Ma Ying
The comfort women bronze statue, installed by the Tainan Association for the Promotion of Human Rights Equality for Comfort Women, was created by artist Lin Kunming. The back panel of the statue displays information in Chinese, English, Japanese, and Korean, describing the experiences of hundreds of thousands of comfort women after the Japanese military invaded Nanjing in 1937. The statue is positioned directly opposite the former Japanese-era building that now houses the renowned Lín Department Store, a popular tourist attraction in Tainan.
Today, comfort women statues can also be found at the Japanese Embassy in Seoul, South Korea; the Japanese Consulate in Busan; and St. Mary’s Square near San Francisco’s Chinatown in the United States. However, a comfort women statue erected in Manila, Philippines in 2017 was subsequently removed.