YUNGHI KIM PHOTOGRAPHY

COMFORT WOMEN

Forgotten Women

In a basement apartments in Seoul, South Korea, four grandmothers in their 70's live together as a family. For 50 years, these women have kept their secrets, too ashamed to tell the world and their families.

These were peasant girls from poor families in small villages throughout Korea. They were promised good jobs doing laundry and cooking for the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II. But when these women, many in their teens, arrived at their destinations, they found themselves forced to be sex slaves at "comfort stations".

The women were forced to provide 30 to 40 sexual services a day to Japanese soldiers. Most lost their virginity this way. If they resisted, they were beaten. For the Japanese Army, these women were considered "war supplies".

About 200,000 women from Asia, are believed to have been forced into sexual slavery.

caption with each picture.

All images copyright 2006 Yunghi Kim,

all rights reserved.

thought she was being recruited to go to Japan to work in a factory doing laundry and looking after wounded soldiers. Instead she ended up in an island in South Pacific, where she was forced to provide sexual services for three years at a Japanese military. . After the war she married and had three children but her husband never knew that she had been a comfort woman.
   
suffered from syphilis, malaria and ovarian cancer. She married but she always feared that her late husband would find out about her past. She hated having sex with a her husband. She discovered the Protestant religion a few years ago and prays twoice a day for her health.
   
came publicly forward after hearing Japanese claims on TV that comfort stations neveer existed. "I'm here, I'm a witness, they're lying!"
     
  
is dying from lung cancer and she is too weak to get out of bed. At 15 ended up at a comfort station, where she became pregnant and bore a son, whom she had to give up to an orphanage. Her son soon died of a pneumonia. She never married and lived alone most of her life. After the war, she worked in factories and cleaned houses.
  
voluntarily left her village in Korea at 17, to fiind a job in Japan. Instead she found herself in Borneo , where she was forced to serve 20 to 30 soldiers a day. The painting on the wall show how young girls were snatched away from their families.
   
on a chilly January winter's day Kim Sun Duck, pickets outside the Japanese Embassy in Seoul. Every Wednesday for the past four years they protested outside the Embassy, seeking reparations for the comfort women. This day marks 200th protest. The comfort women are demanding that the Japanese government admit its involvement, issue a public apology, release all pertinent documents, create a memorial for the victims, compensate the survivors and their families, and re-write Japanese history textbooks to include the sexual slavery of the comfort women.
     
  
   
dying of lung cancer, has breakfast in her room. She says it's great living together with other grandmothers. "There's harmony. All my life I've lived alone and was very lonely," she said. Other grandmothers cook her meals and because she's too weak to leave her room.
   
practices acupuncture to relieve pain and numbness in her legs.
     
  
gets ready for the day by washing her face and gargling mouthwash in her small and simple four-room apartment, which she shares with other comfort women.
  
share a laugh. These woman choose to live together for economic and emotional reasons. They have been lonely most of their lives and they depend on one another for support.
  
is going to college to study international law at Kyung Buk National University in city of Taegue. She was one of nine children and the only daughter from a poverty-stricken family. At age 16, she went to Japan, thinking there would be a good job. But she ended up in Taiwan. Her first sexual experience was being raped aboard the ship on her way to Taiwan. In Taiwan she was electrically tortured when she refused to have sex with a Japanese soldier. She also contracted gonorrhea, and the disease lingered for a long time.
     
  
Three grandmothers -- Pak Onnyun, Kim Sun Duck and Son Pon Nim -- peer outside of their apartment in Seoul at the fresh fallen snow. Their apartment is paid for by Buddhist monks. The women receive the equivalent of US $300 each per month from the Korean government and mostly rely on donations of food from friends and supporters to make end meet.
  
Playful with the photographer.