Tens of thousands of Korean women were forced into sexual slavery by Japan during WWII. In the 1990s, about 240 of these so-called "comfort women" publicly identified themselves. Seven of them are still alive—and until her Sunday death, Gil Won-ok had been number eight. "Through her life, we have seen what human dignity is," said a South Korean lawmaker on Monday. The New York Times and Washington Post delve into Gil's life in their obituaries for the 96-year-old, who was born in 1928 and had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in recent years.
Coerced into a brothel as a 13-year-old, she was offered up to Japanese soldiers in northeast China for a year, during which she contracted syphilis and had her fallopian tubes tied by Japanese doctors. "I was crippled by the age of 14," she says. She returned home but was again forced to work in a military brothel in China a short time later. At the conclusion of WWII, she went home to Korea, adopted a son, and stayed close-lipped on her past—until 1998, when she saw news footage of former comfort women protesting in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul.
"I had never even heard of the term 'comfort woman' before," she said in 2004. "I only described my experiences as subhuman treatment." She became an outspoken advocate for the many women like her and campaigned to have Japan accept legal responsibility for what occurred and compensate the women. Japan says it has sufficiently apologized and provided restitution. The women disagree, and Gil expressed in 2013 that the fight wouldn't end with her: "They are wrong if they think it will be over when the last of us die. There will be our descendants continuing to campaign as long as it takes to get the apology we deserve. It will not be over with our death." (More obituary stories.)
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