SEOUL — They're the dwindling survivors of a war crime who have fought 17 years for justice. Now amid a gathering revisionist movement in Japan, they live out their final days in the South Korean countryside with the worst fear of all: that the world will forget what happened to them.
In South Korea, they call them "halmoni," or grandmothers, although many are so scarred mentally and physically that they have never married or had children. In Japan, they are known as "comfort women," a hated euphemism for their forced role of providing "comfort" to marauding troops in military brothels. But around the world, another, altogether starker term will follow them to their graves: sex slaves.
Kang Il Chul is one of a handful of the surviving women living out their final days in Sharing House, a museum and communal refuge two hours from Seoul. It is a stark, concrete building off a country road set in a sparsely populated area of rice fields and scraggly mountain forests. But she has found some peace here in Gyeonggi Province. "I am among my friends, who treat me well."