Gil Won-Ok, one of the last survivors of sexual slavery in the brothels of Japanese troops of the Second World War, which campaigned to attract international attention to the suffering of thousands of women like her, is Died this week at her home. She was 96 years old.
The death of Ms. Gil at her home in Incheon, west of Seoul, was confirmed Sunday by the South Korean government. The cause of his death has not been revealed. Officials said that during her last years, Ms. Gil had suffered from Alzheimer’s and a host of other ailments often associated with old age.
In her last days, Ms. Gil had fiercely criticized Japan, accusing the government of refusing to take legal responsibility for sexual slavery and of offering compensation to the victims, known euphémistic under the name of “comforting women”. She died with her tireless request not satisfied, but she said that the court campaign would continue after her death.
Despite the stigma, around 240 South Korean women introduced themselves to reporting their painful past as comforting women since their government began to accept registration in the early 1990s. Now, only seven of them – with An average age of 95 years – are still alive.
“They are wrong if they think it will be finished when the last of us dies,” said Ms. Gil in 2013. “There will be our descendants who will continue to campaign as long as it will take to obtain the excuses that we Mounts.
In South Korea, forced women for sexual slavery have been widely accepted as a deeply emotional symbol of the suffering of Korea under colonial domination by Japan from 1910 to 1945, and its need for historical justice. A parade of politicians and senior officials attended the members of the government. The funeral held Ms. Gil on Tuesday or sent crowns and published statements in her honor.
“During his life, we saw what human dignity is,” said Woo Won-Shik, the president of the National Assembly on Monday.
Ms. Gil was born in 1928 in Hoichon, in what is now northwest of North Korea. Japan then directed Korea as a colony and Korea had not yet been divided in the north and south.
She lived in Pyongyang and was barely 13 years old when she was recruited for Japanese soldiers in northeast China. After a year, she was sent home with sexually transmitted diseases. After her return to China in 1942 to find work to support her poor family, she was again forced to work in a military mess for Japanese troops.
After the end of the war with the defeat of Japan, Ms. Gil returned to Korea.
Like many former comfort women, she has never married and has long since maintained her to spend a secret. She then adopted a son and earned her life as a street restoration seller.
In 1991, when South Korea emerged from the military regime, some of the women who were enslaved by Japan broke decades of silence to talk about what they had experienced during the Second World War. Historians estimate that up to 200,000 women, mainly in Korea, have been mobilized to work in front line brothels, where they were raped by several Japanese soldiers every day.
Ms. Gil decided to come forward after watching the old women of Comfort protest in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul on television in 1998. Since then, she has witnessed gatherings of weekly demonstrations and has traveled worldwide, testifying During international conferences and collecting signatures supporting support for the support of signatures supporting support for the world the demand of women that Japan has Expirated and apologizes for its colonial past.
The controversy surrounding the comfort of women remains the most emotionally loaded historical dispute that divides South Korea and Japan, the two most important allies in the United States in East Asia.
Tokyo insists that he has apologized enough and that all the claims resulting from his colonial domination were resolved under a treaty restoring diplomatic ties between the two nations in 1965. But women say that their grievances have not been properly treated in the treaty.
Until South Korea joined women in the 1990s, women victims of sexual violence had to live in shame and silence rather than seeking reparation. When young journalists asked him questions about her past, Ms. Gil has often called her experience “the worst humiliation from which a woman can suffer”.
She said that her love of song helped her support her.
“When I was alone and I felt empty in my soul, I have always sung songs,” said Ms. Gil in 2017, when she released an album.
The Reverend Jeong Seok-Won, who directed Ms. Gil’s funeral, said that her life in South Korea is like that of a rape victim who was constantly moving in different places to avoid being ashamed.
“But she decided to expose her own pain so as not to repeat herself,” he said, according to the national news agency Yonhap. “She has overcome her painful past to lead a big life.”
