Reconciliation and Healing Foundation

The Reconciliation and Healing Foundation (Korean: 화해와 치유 재단; Chinese: 和解与治愈基金会) was a South Korean foundation created on 28 December 2015 under the agreement between the government of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and the government of South Korean President Park Geun-hye concerning the issue of comfort women. Its stated purpose was to provide compensation and support to surviving Korean comfort women. The foundation was a bilateral initiative, funded primarily by the Japanese government, and represented the institutional core of the 2015 Japan–South Korea comfort women agreement. It operated under the South Korean legal framework as a non-profit foundation and maintained a website at rhf.or.kr. The foundation became politically contested in South Korea, where many survivors and advocacy groups rejected the agreement as insufficient and not genuinely victim-centered. Following a change of government in South Korea, the foundation was effectively dissolved in 2018, and the 2015 agreement was subsequently criticized and effectively abandoned by the South Korean side. The foundation is therefore best understood as a short-lived bilateral diplomatic and humanitarian mechanism rather than a long-standing charitable institution.

The Reconciliation and Healing Foundation was established on 28 December 2015 as part of the agreement reached between the government of Japan under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and the government of South Korea under President Park Geun-hye regarding the comfort women issue. The foundation was jointly set up by the two governments to provide compensation to Korean comfort women. It was funded primarily by the Japanese government and operated as a South Korean non-profit foundation. The foundation represented the institutional implementation of the 2015 agreement, which was intended to settle the long-running dispute over the comfort women issue "finally and irreversibly." However, the agreement and the foundation faced strong domestic opposition in South Korea from surviving comfort women and civic groups, who argued that the process had not adequately consulted the victims and that the terms did not constitute a genuine apology or sufficient reparations. After the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye and the election of President Moon Jae-in in 2017, the South Korean government reassessed the agreement. In 2018, the foundation was effectively dissolved by the South Korean government, and the 2015 agreement was criticized as flawed. The foundation's website, rhf.or.kr, is no longer active. The episode remains a significant and contentious chapter in Japan–South Korea relations.

• 28 December 2015: The Reconciliation and Healing Foundation is established under the Japan–South Korea comfort women agreement.

• 2018: The foundation is effectively dissolved by the South Korean government.

Bilateral compensation and support mechanism for surviving Korean comfort women under the 2015 Japan–South Korea agreement.

1. 1Reconciliation and Healing Foundation – Wikidatawikidata.org
2. 2和解与治愈基金会 – 维基百科zh.wikipedia.org