The Japanese government recently agreed to pay $8.7mn to dozens of Korean women who were forced to become prostitutes serving Japanese soldiers. The payment is meant as compensation for their suffering. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe expressed his “deepest regrets” and “contrition” from deep in his heart to the victims.
Among the estimated 100,000 to 200,000 women recruited from different countries to serve Japanese soldiers, 80 to 90% were from Korea. Girls as young as 11-years-old were forced to serve between five and 40 soldiers a day and almost 100 soldiers on weekends. Those who resisted were often beaten, burned or wounded. The abuse was such that many women took their lives.
After the end of World War II, the Japanese government  had insisted that the “comfort stations” were in fact private brothels that had been administered by private citizens. Only in 1993 did the government admit that the  military had been “directly or indirectly” involved in establishment and operation of “comfort stations” and in the transportation of the women.
The first Korean former comfort woman to tell her story was Bae Bong Ki in 1980. Another comfort woman, Kim Hak Soon, who died in 1997, related in 1991 how she was abducted by Japanese soldiers when she was 17 and forced to carry ammunition by day and serve as a prostitute by night. Her story sparked several other testimonies by women who were obliged to work as sexual slaves in military comfort stations. Evidence of such stations has already been found in the Koreas, China, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, Myanmar, New Guinea and Okinawa .
Illustrative of the ordeal comfort women went through is the testimony of Chung Seo Woon in the book titled Making More Waves (Beacon Press, Boston, 1997). Chung was an only child born in Korea to the family of a wealthy landowner. Because of his activities against colonial rule, her father was sent to prison and tortured.
When she was 16, she was allowed to visit her father. The same Japanese official who allowed her to see her father later came to her house. He told her that if she went to work in Japan for two years, her father would be released. Despite strong objections from her mother, she agreed to do so.
Chung was placed on a ship with many other girls and women. She was hopeful that at the end of the two years her father would be released from prison, as she had been told by the officer. After being taken to Japan , the women were sent to several other countries and a group of them left in each country. After reaching Jakarta, the group that included the young Chung was taken to a hospital where she was sterilised.
The group was then taken to Semarang, a coastal city in Indonesia, and placed on a row of barracks. From then on they were obliged to serve dozens of soldiers and officers. In the process, she was forced to become an opium addict. Chung attempted to commit suicide by swallowing malaria pills.