Fighting disease, death and disillusionment, members of South Korea’s rapidly dwindling sisterhood of surviving "comfort women" say they are facing the twilight of their lives with diminished camaraderie and will to wage political battles.
Only 14 of the 240 registered comfort women are still alive in South Korea, nearly half the number who were alive just three years ago.
The comfort women — a euphemism for those who were forced or coerced into Japan’s wartime brothel system under various circumstances, including abduction, deception and poverty — have been a fixture of South Korean politics since Kim Hak-sun first came forward in 1991 to publicly testify of her experience.