WW2-ANNIVERSARY/SOUTH KOREA-COMFORT WOMEN South Korean WW2 sex slaves hope for Abe apology as twilight of life fades

Record ID: 144333

  • Title: WW2-ANNIVERSARY/SOUTH KOREA-COMFORT WOMEN South Korean WW2 sex slaves hope for Abe apology as twilight of life fades
  • Date: 11th August 2015
  • Summary: COMPUTER MONITOR SHOWING MEDICAL RECORD OF LEE
  • Embargoed: 26th August 2015 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVAB793ECYK2E1CTQCJMB2DDGGTZ
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: As the Asian neighbours await Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's remarks marking the 70th anniversary of the end of World War Two, time is running out for the former comfort women, or wartime sex slaves, who have been seeking a proper apology and compensation from Japan for decades.
    Those former comfort women, mostly in their late 80s, regularly attend anti-Japan rallies held in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul demanding a proper apology and compensation from Japan. Five have died in South Korea since June.
    In South Korea, Japan's 1910-1945 colonisation of the peninsula and the legacy World War Two remains a highly sensitive subject. The issue of "comfort women", as the victims are euphemistically known in Japan, is especially thorny.
    Some historians estimate that as many as 200,000 comfort women, many from China and South Korea, were forced into the Imperial Japanese Army's brothels before and during World War Two.
    Japan acknowledged in 1993 that the state played a role in forcing Korean and Chinese women into military brothels and set up a fund to provide compensation to survivors in 1995. However, Japan has refused to pay direct compensation to survivors.
    Abe, a former critic of the 1993 statement, now says he will uphold it, but South Korea says Japan has not atoned enough. Many Japanese conservatives say there is no proof that authorities directly coerced the women.
    Kim Bok-dong, one of South Korea's 48 surviving comfort women, said she had waited for too long.
    "I didn't know it would take this long. If I had known, I wouldn't have come forward. I thought it could be done easily," said 89-year-old Kim.
    Kim was 14 years old when a Japanese police officer and a soldier came to her rural country home where she lived with her mother and two sisters, demanding she come with them to go work at a garment factory. But instead she was forced to become a sex slave at a Japanese military brothel.
    "None of the things about the August 15 Liberation Day matters to us. Until this is resolved, we will not be truly liberated," Kim said.
    Gil Won-ok had a similar fate as Kim. Gil was 13 when she was taken from her Pyongyang home and spent five years at military brothels in China.
    The 86-year-old said a heartfelt apology from Abe would be just what is needed to put her ordeal behind and finally find peace, although she does not hold out much hope.
    "To be able to receive an apology would allow us to close our eyes. But I doubt that will happen easily. They are such poisonous people," she said.
    Hope fades as time is running out for most of the victims.
    "It is like I was given the death sentence when the hospital told me my days were numbered. I have a cardiac disease, but I would not undergo operation. My doctor told me I would die even if I have the operation," said 86-year-old Lee Ok-seon, one of the surviving comfort women.
    South Korea has made it a condition for improved ties with Japan that Abe uphold past statements of apology over its colonisation of the Korean peninsula and its military's role in sex slavery.
    President Park Geun-hye said last week Abe's statement may be the last chance for the Japanese leader to resolve what is an issue of utmost urgency.
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