Japanese officials’ demand to remove a monument dedicated to the memory of wartime sex slaves in New Jersey has backfired, according to the New York Times.

The Times said Japanese lobbying to remove the monument had made the Korean community there determined to build more of them

According to the article, James Rotundo, the mayor of Palisades Park, where the monument is located, said the lobbying began late last month when Japanese officials sent e-mails requesting a meeting with the borough administration.

The first meeting was led by officials at the Japanese consulate in New York who requested the removal of the monument.

They also pledged to donate books to the public library saying they would “do some things to show that we’re united in this world and not divided,” said Rotundo. Borough officials rejected the deal.

On May 6, four members of Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party also met with borough officials and tried to convince them that the women had never been forcibly conscripted.

On the memorial, there is a picture of a Japanese soldier forcing a woman to cower, with the inscription “In the memory of the more than 200,000 women and girls who were abducted by the armed forces of the government of imperial Japan, 1930s-1945, known as ‘comfort women.’”

A lawyer at the Korean American Voters’ Council, Park Che-jin who built the memorial in 2010 said Japan’s actions had motivated Korean communities to build more monuments.

“They’re helping us. We can increase the awareness of this issue” he added in an interview with NYT.

(From news reports)