An unnamed netizen submitted an online petition to the White House on Wednesday, calling for the removal of a monument to commemorate “comfort women,” a term referring to women who were forced into sexual slavery by Japan during World War II.

“Please remove the statue in a public park in Glendale, California. It is a statue of a Comfort Women masquerading as a peace statue while in essence, after reading the inscription, it is promoting hate towards the people and nation of Japan,” he or she said in the petition.

The statue in question, which is in the form of a girl wearing traditional Korean clothing, was erected earlier this year as a testament to the immense pain suffered by about 200,000 women victimized by the Japanese during the war.

As of Friday morning, more than 4,200 people have signed the petition. The White House is mandated to address any petition which has received more than 100,000 signatures.

Korean-Americans have expressed their fury at the petition, while some suspect that it was filed by a far-right American blogger in Texas, who has a history of belittling the meaning of the statue. The blogger had claimed that comfort women were no more than prostitutes who followed Japanese soldiers to make profit.

(minsikyoon@heraldcorp.com)