Comfort women were back in the spotlight on 28 December 2015 when Liberation published an article under the title, “Mea culpa du Japon pour les ‘femmes de réconfort’ sud-coréennes”—Japan’s Mea Culpa for South Korean Comfort Women. Liberation called the agreement between Japan and South Korea “historic.” Yet the Japanese imperial army’s involvement had already been acknowledged in the Kôno Statement over twenty years earlier—in 1993. Why did the Kôno Statement not heal the wounds of the past? Why can there be no consensus in Japan as to victim recognition? In this essay, I will attempt to understand the historical and geopolitical context that led Abe Shinzô to take action. I will show how oral history and testimony spurred on by the Japanese-Korean feminist movement as well as transnational feminism in the 1990s and 2000s played a fundamental role in the recognition of the trauma experienced by these women.