'Comfort women' memorial unveiled in San Francisco

SAN FRANCISCO - "I hate the crime, not the people," an emotional Lee Yong-soo, a Korean woman who survived sexual slavery by the Imperial Army of Japan during World War II, told a packed audience at a public square in San Francisco.

It was not the first time for Lee, 89, to make such a statement. She had spoken before in front of local and national legislative bodies as well as national and international human rights committees, and to reporters, about presumably the largest-scale crime specifically targeting women in human history.

Lee witnessed the unveiling of a memorial called the "Comfort Women" Column of Strength on Friday. The face of the sculpture depicted Kim Hak-soon, a Korean woman forcefully taken at the age of 17 by Japanese soldiers and confined to a "comfort station".

Kim died in December 1997 at the age of 73.

Kim was the first among the surviving "comfort women", a euphemism for the hundreds of thousands of girls and women in 13 Asia-Pacific countries or regions who were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese army from 1930 to 1945, to go public about her story in August 1991.

Lee followed in June 1992, revealing that her ordeal began when she was 16.

It was not the first time for Lee, now an activist, to travel around the world to tell people what it means for her to seek justice, especially for those who did not survive to hear a formal apology from the Japanese government.

Historians believe that as many as 200,000 women, mostly from the Korean Peninsula as well as from China and Southeast Asian nations, were forced into sex enslavement for Japanese soldiers during the devastating war. However, those who deny history in Japan denigrate them as "paid prostitutes" or "willing volunteers".

The unveiling of the "comfort women" memorial, the first in a major city in the United States, took place on the second anniversary of a resolution passed by San Francisco city and the county's legislative Board of Supervisors.

Besides calling for putting up the memorial, the resolution aimed at raising public awareness against sex trafficking and all forms of sexual violence.

At the unveiling ceremony, Eric Mar, a former board member who initiated the process, choked back tears when he said that Lee's courage to stand up against sexual violence and historical crimes is an inspiration for people fighting for justice.

Xinhua