Former Victim of Japanese Sexual Slavery Dies

A woman who was forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military during World War II has died of colorectal cancer at her home in Gyeongsan, North Gyeongsang Province. She was 82.

Kim Soon-ak (photo) died Saturday. She had undergone surgery last month.

Born in Gyeongsan in 1928, she went to Harbin and Inner Mongolia, China, after being deceived into accepting a job in 1943. Over the following two years, she was forced to provide sex at a Japanese military brothel in Beijing before returning home in 1946.

In 2001, she registered as a victim of sexual slavery of the Japanese military and described the ordeal the so-called comfort women faced through public events organized by the Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan and testified at the Korean National Assembly.

In 2008, she published a memoir on her life as a sex slave.

Her death leaves 88 surviving sex slaves of her kind registered with the government. Her civic group-led funeral will begin at the funeral hall of Kwak’s Hospital in Daegu at 7:30 a.m. today and take the form of a woodland burial at Eunhae Temple in Yeongcheon, North Gyeongsang Province.

passion@donga.com