The headline: “South Korea criticizes Israel and compares its actions to Japanese sexual slavery.”

Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but isn’t there a layer of irony here? Both South Korea and Japan struggle with high suicide rates, brutal work cultures, soaring living costs, and systemic pressures that push people to the edge. And in that context, sexual labor often becomes just another form of exploitation, not always consensual, often economic survival.

So when South Korea uses the trauma of sexual slavery as a rhetorical weapon against another country, while similar exploitative dynamics exist at home (even if different in scale and nature), doesn’t that come off as hypocritical? Not saying Israel is blameless, just wondering if the pot is calling the kettle black.

Am I missing something?