Prof. Seo Kyoung-duk of Sungshin Women's University has posted an ad in the Wall Street Journal criticizing Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's attempts to whitewash his country's World War II atrocities.
The ad, with the slogan "Do You Know?" started appearing on the WSJ's online edition on Monday, and features a photo of Abe taken in May in the cockpit of a fighter jet giving the thumbs-up. The jet bears the number "731," which was a notorious Japanese unit that conducted brutal experiments on human beings in Harbin from 1932 to 1945. They included injecting prisoners with bubonic plague, cholera and anthrax and cutting them up without anesthetic to study the effects.
The ad says Unit 731 was "established by the Japanese Imperial Army in 1932 to conduct chemical and biological warfare experiments on living people. To this day, the Japanese government fails to acknowledge the cruel and brutal acts of Unit 731 and has made no sincere apology or restitution to the families of the victims."
Seo also placed an ad in the New York Times in August calling on the Japanese government to apologize to women pressed into sexual slavery for Japanese soldiers during World War II. He said the first ad alerted people around the world to the Japanese government's cover-ups. The latest ad, he said, is a "continuation of a global campaign."
Seo is now preparing a third ad focusing on the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941 in order to shed light on the "ugly history" of Japan. The professor is apparently paying for the ads from his own pocket.
