Lee Ok-seon, 'comfort woman' survivor, dies at 97
Published: 12 May. 2025, 09:49
Updated: 12 May. 2025, 18:05
![Lee Ok-seon, a former sex slave for Japanese World War II troops, speaks in Gwangju, Gyeonggi, in Aug. 12, 2023 during an event mourning ″comfort women″ victims. [YONHAP]](https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/data/photo/2025/05/12/371de776-6a9b-4cd9-8736-bf681010ed6c.jpg)
Lee Ok-seon, a former sex slave for Japanese World War II troops, speaks in Gwangju, Gyeonggi, in Aug. 12, 2023 during an event mourning ″comfort women″ victims. [YONHAP]
Lee Ok-seon, a "comfort woman" survivor, died Sunday at the age of 97, a shelter for the victims said.
She died at a nursing hospital in Seongnam, southern Seoul, around 8 p.m. after her health deteriorated, according to the House of Sharing in nearby Gwangju, Gyeonggi.
Lee had been transferred from the shelter to the hospital in March last year.
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. "Comfort woman" is used as a euphemism for these sex slaves. Korea was a Japanese colony from 1910-45.
Yonhap
with the Korea JoongAng Daily
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