[News Today] ‘Comfort woman’ Lee Ok-seon passes

[LEAD]
Lee Ok-seon, a survivor of Japan's wartime sexual slavery, passed away last night. She spent her life demanding a proper apology and compensation from Japan, but received neither.

[REPORT]
Lee Ok-seon, who visited a university in Germany in 2013, tells a painful story of the horrors she experienced when she was fifteen.

Lee Ok-seon / September, 2013
One man took this arm and the other took that arm and they dragged me away. We were not liberated and our war didn't end. We're still at war.

Lee Ok-seon who had informed the world about the sexual atrocities committed by the Japanese military for more than 20 years has passed away.

She died at a convalescent hospital in Seongnam, Gyeonggi-do Province at around 7 p.m. Sunday.

Born in Busan in 1928, she was forced into sexual enslavement by the Japanese armed forces when she was just 15 years old.

She stayed in China even after Korea was liberated and returned to her beloved homeland only in June 2000.

Since then, her days were spent fighting.

Despite her failing health, she traveled all over the globe, to Japan, the U.S., Australia and Germany, to testify about what tragedy she had experienced.

She also urged Japan to offer a proper apology.

She sued the impenitent Japanese government for damage compensation and even won the case.

Lee Ok-seon / January, 2021
We are suing Japan. We are asking them to apologize properly. It's not about the money.

But her grief-stricken life ended at 97 without receiving any compensation or apology from the Japanese government.

There now remain only six government-registered survivors of Japan's wartime sex slavery.

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