미국 유튜버, 위안부 및 독도 영상 뉴욕 타임즈 스퀘어에 올려
An American YouTuber put up a video in New York's Times Square to raise awareness of Tokyo's distortion and denial of historic facts.
The clip introduces details of Korea's Dokdo islets... and Japan's wartime sex slavery.
Choi Jeong-yoon has more.
The South Korean national flag appears in the middle of the Times Square in New York.
The video shows pictures of South Korea's easternmost Dokdo Island and statues of so-called 'comfort women' who were forced to serve as sexual slaves for Japanese soldiers during World War Two.
This video was produced by an American YouTube creator Chad Tanner in his desire to raise awareness of Korea's historical issues.
"Basically I wanted to raise awareness about the relationship between Japan, and specifically about ‘Comfort women’, and the sexual slavery that they suffered in the hands of Japan in the 1930s and 1940s."
As a YouTube creator with over 2-hundred-14-thousand subscribers, Chad says he looks for ways to raise awareness in an exciting and attention-grabbing matter. So he decided to post advertisements on Times Square in New York for everyone to see.
In his YouTube video, he stops pedestrians in Times Square and explains the historical background of conflicts over Dokdo Island and the cruelty of Japan's wartime sex slavery.
However, he says making the video and actually getting the permission for the Times Square billboard wasn't easy. The billboards' rules require advertisements to be free from any political or religious stance that can be deemed controversial.
He found the solution by attracting the audience to visit the web site he created.
"I bought a domain, ‘visitdokdo.com’ where people could go to, to learn more about Dokdo, ‘Comfort women’. So I linked out to some other web sites. So that was kind of the goal."
Chad's initial intention succeeded as many South Koreans were motivated to share the issue globally. In his comments, many South Korean viewers were encouraged to share the story with their foreign friends.
As more than 85% of his viewers are South Korean and he has a deep affection for the country, he hopes to share the stories of South Koreans being treated unfairly during the Japanese colonial era.
"I would like to spread some more awareness about comfort women, but also in the future, other issues that are going to be important to Korean people and that they want to be shared globally."
The advertisements were run in New York Times Square on August 13th, for 50 times over a period of 12 hours.
Choi, Jeong-yoon, Arirang News.
