Wednesday demonstration

Wednesday demonstration (Korean: 수요 집회, romanized: Suyo jipoe), officially named Wednesday Demonstration demanding Japan to redress the Comfort Women problems (Korean: 일본군 위안부 문제 해결을 위한 정기 수요시위), is a weekly protest in South Korea which aims at obtaining justice from the Japanese government regarding the large-scale sexual slavery system established under Imperial Japan rule during World War II (its victims are commonly known under the euphemism "comfort women").

The weekly protest is held in the presence of surviving comfort women on every Wednesday at noon in front of the Embassy of Japan in Seoul.

[5] The Wednesday demonstration was listed in March 2002 in the Guinness Book of Records as the world's oldest rally on a single theme.

In 2007, the Prime minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe, mentioned how there was no "forceful" action of the Japanese government in gathering the women, which is still his stance regarding this issue until the present.

Such stance has been supported by the new foreign minister of South Korea, Kang Kyung-wha who pinpointed how the two countries are at odds regarding the deal struck in 2015.

Article 11 Clause 4 of the Assembly and Demonstration Act of South Korea restricts the protests within 100 meters from the foreign embassies.

[13] On November 21, 2018, however, the Japanese-funded comfort women foundation which was launched in July 2016 to finance the controversial negotiated settlement was shut down by President Moon Jae-in ministry after the 2015 agreement was scrapped.

[18] Lee Yong-soo claimed that the protests had only engendered hatred between young South Korean and Japanese people and that the group created to support her and other survivors had exploited public sympathy for their suffering to obtain donations, but had spent little of their funds on the women's welfare.

[20] Activist Meehyang Yoon's book on comfort women and the Wednesday demonstrations, 20 Years of Wednesdays: The Unshakable Hope of the Halmoni – Former Japanese Military Comfort Women (20년간의 수요일 : 일본군 '위안부' 할머니들이 외치는 당당한 희망), was published in 2010 in Korean, and translated into Japanese the following year.