Gil, one of the last survivors of sexual slavery in the Japanese World War II brothel who campaigned to draw international attention to the suffering of thousands of women like her. Wong Ok passed away on Sunday at his home in Incheon, South Korea, west of Seoul. She was 96 years old.
Her death was confirmed by the Korean government. Officials said she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in her last year.
Until her last day, Gil criticized Japan vigorously, accusing her of taking legal responsibility for sexual slavery and refusing to provide compensation to victims known as “comfortable women.” She died without meeting her needs, but she said the campaign for justice continued after her death.
Despite the stigma, around 240 Korean women have stepped forward to reporting their painful past as comfortable women after the government began accepting registrations in the early 1990s. Today, only seven people, with an average age of 95, survive.
“If you think that when our last dies, it's over, they're wrong,” Gill said in 2013. It will not end with our death. ”
In Korea, women forced into sexual slavery were widely accepted as a deep emotional symbol of South Korea's suffering under the colonial rule of Japan from 1910 to 1945, and the need for historical justice It's sex. On Tuesday, Gil's funeral and a wreath and a statement were issued in her honor.
“Through her life, we have seen what human dignity is,” said Parliamentary chair Woo Wong Sik, after visiting a station where she was mourning on Monday. He spoke in a social media post.
Gil Wong Ok was born in Huicong in 1928. It is currently located in the northwest of North Korea. Japan then ruled South Korea as a colony, and South Korea was not yet divided into North and South.
She was only 13 years old and lived in Pyongyang's poverty when she was recruited for Japanese soldiers in northeastern China. A year later, she was sent home with a sexually transmitted disease. After finding work to support her family in 1942, she was again forced to work in a Japanese military brothel.
After the war ended with Japan's defeat, Gil returned to Korea.
Like many former comfortable women, she never got married and kept her a secret past her for many years. She later adopted her son and made a living as a street food vendor.
In 1991, as South Korea emerged from military rule, some women enslaved to Japan during the war broke decades of silence and spoke about what they had experienced. Historians estimate that up to 200,000 women, primarily from Korea, were forced to work in frontline brothels, where they were raped by several Japanese soldiers every day.
Gil decided to move forward after watching a television broadcast of a former comfortable woman protesting in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul in 1998. Since then, she has attended weekly protest rallies there, traveled around the world, testified at international conferences, and gathered signatures in support of the woman's demands that Japan soften its colonial past and apologize.
This controversy remains the most emotionally charged historical conflict that divides two of the US East Asia's most important ally, Korea and Japan.
Tokyo argues that it has a sufficient apology and that all claims arising from its colonial rule were settled in 1965 under a treaty reestablishing diplomatic relations between the two countries.
Until South Korea gathered behind women in the 1990s, female victims of sexual violence were left to live in shame and silence rather than seeking relief. When a young reporter asked her about her past, Gil often called her experience “the worst humiliation a woman could suffer.”
She said her love for singing helped her to maintain her.
“When I felt lonely and empty in my heart, I always sang myself,” Gill said in 2017 when she released the album.
Pastor John Seok-won, who led Ms. Gil's funeral, said her life in Korea was similar to the life of a rape victim who had to constantly move to different places to avoid being embarrassed.
“But she decided to expose her pain so that it wouldn't be repeated,” he said, Yonghap. “She overcame her painful past to live a great life.”
