South Koreans mourn death of former WWII sex slave

A statue of a girl representing thousands of Korean women enslaved for sex by Japan’s imperial forces before and during World War II, is seen during a weekly rally near the Japanese Embassy in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, Jan. 30, 2019. Hundreds of South Koreans are mourning the death of a former sex slave for the Japanese military during World War II by demanding reparations from Tokyo over wartime atrocities. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)

SEOUL — Hundreds of South Koreans mourned the death of a former sex slave for the Japanese military during World War II during in a rally in Seoul Wednesday that demanded reparations from Tokyo over wartime atrocities.

Kim Bok-dong had been a vocal protest leader at the weekly rallies held every Wednesday in Seoul for nearly 30 years. She died on Monday following a battle with cancer. She was 92.

At a narrow street near where the Japanese Embassy used to be, protesters gathered around a bronze statue of a girl representing Korean sexual slavery victims and held a moment of silence for Kim. Many of them held signboards with Kim’s photos and words including, “We will never forget the life of Kim Bok-dong” and “Japanese government, apologize!”

Kim was one of the first victims to speak out and break decades of silence over Japan’s wartime sexual slavery that experts said forced thousands of Asian women into front-line brothels. She traveled around the world testifying about her experience, including at the United Nations World Conference on Human Rights in 1993 and at a U.N. Human Rights Council panel in 2016. Of the 239 Korean women who have come forward as victims, only 23 are still alive.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in, who visited Kim’s altar at a Seoul hospital in Tuesday, said in a statement that Kim devoted her life to “restoring human dignity” and that her campaigning gave South Koreans a “braveness to face the truth.”

According to Yoon Meehyang, who heads an activist group representing South Korean sexual slavery victims, Kim was dragged away from home at the age of 14 and forced to have sex with Japanese soldiers at military brothels in China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Singapore from 1940 to 1945. She came forward as a sexual slavery victim in 1992, a year after Kim Hak-sun became the first South Korean woman to identify herself as a former sex slave.

Kim’s death came at time when relations between South Korea and Japan have sunk to their lowest in years over Japan’s refusal to fully acknowledge the sufferings of the so-called “comfort women” during WWII and forced laborers during its colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula from 1910 through 1945.

Moon’s government in November announced plans to dissolve a foundation founded by Japan to compensate South Korean sexual slavery victims, which if carried out would effectively kill a controversial 2015 agreement between the countries to settle a decades-long impasse over the issue.

Many in South Korea believed that Seoul’s previous conservative government settled for far too less in the deal, where Tokyo agreed to fund the foundation with 1 billion yen ($9 million), and that Japan still hasn’t acknowledged legal responsibility for atrocities during its colonial occupation of Korea.

Japan had said it didn’t consider the money it provided to the fund as compensation, insisting that all wartime compensation issues were settled in a 1965 treaty that restored diplomatic ties between the countries and was accompanied by more than $800 million in economic aid and loans from Tokyo to Seoul.

Japan blasted Seoul’s decision to walk back on the deal, with Foreign Minister Taro Kono saying Seoul was violating the “most basic rule to live in the international society.” /kga