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Gil Won-ok, 'comfort woman' activist, dies at 97

Published: 17 Feb. 2025, 09:50

Gil Won-ok sings a song during a showcase for her album ″Like a Rock″ at the War and Women's Human Rights Museum in Seoul on Aug. 10, 2017. [YONHAP]

Gil Won-ok, a former sex slave for Japanese troops who campaigned to raise awareness of the World War II atrocity, died Sunday, the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family said. She was 97.

Gil was 13 years old when she was taken from her home in Pyongyang, now the capital of North Korea, to work as a "comfort woman," a euphemism for the sex slaves.

"Gil Won-ok campaigned actively to raise awareness of the suffering of the Japanese military's comfort women at home and abroad," acting Gender Equality Minister Shin Young-sook said in a statement. "We hope that, following a life of hardship, she will find peace."

Gil's death reduces to seven the number of surviving comfort women in Korea. Of the 240 women registered with the government, 233 have died.

Two of the survivors are between the ages of 90 and 95, while the others are 96 or older.

Historians estimate that up to 200,000 women, mostly from Korea, were mobilized to work in front-line brothels for Japanese soldiers during the war. Korea was a Japanese colony from 1910-45.

Yonhap