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Kim, Koon Ja
http://foreignaffairs.house.gov/110/kim021507.htm
February 15, 2007
I remember the day that changed my life forever.? I was wearing a black skirt, a green shirt, and black shoes.?? It was March of 1942, and I was 16 years old.? I had been sent out of the house by police officer Choi and told that I needed to go and make some money.? I found a Korean man wearing a military uniform and he told me that he would send me on an errand and I would be paid for this errand.? I followed him and he told me to board a train ? a freight car.? I did not know where I was going but I saw seven other young girls and another man in a military uniform on this freight train. There were other soldiers in different cars on the train, but I didn’t see them until we came to a stop and I got off the train. ??A Japanese soldier with a ranking badge was waiting for us by a truck. The soldiers got on the truck and the other girls and I were put on the back of the truck.
http://www.expat-advisory.com/seoul/articles-korean-comfort-women-seoul.php
After her parents passed away before she was 14, she was orphaned. Her impoverished relatives could not afford to care for her and her siblings, so they lived with other families serving as maids.
When war broke out, many Koreans were marrying quickly so not be drafted by Japanese forces. At 17, she also planned to marry her boyfriend, but his parents objected because they could not overcome her background. Not being married, she was unwillingly drafted by Japan as a sex slave and was forced to China.
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Lee Yong-soo
http://www.internationalrelations.house.gov/110/lee021507.htm
February 15, 2007
In the autumn of 1944, when I was 16 years old, my friend, Kim Punsun, and I were collecting shellfish at the riverside when we noticed an elderly man and a Japanese man looking down at us form the hillside. The older man pointed at us with his finger, and the Japanese man started to walk towards us. The older man disappeared, and the Japanese beckoned to us to follow him. I was scared and ran away, not caring about what happened to my friend. A few days later, Punsun knocked on my window early in the morning, and whispered to me to follow her quietly. I tip-toed out of the house after her. I lift without telling my mother. I was wearing a dark skirt, a long cotton blouse buttoned up at the front and slippers on my feet. I followed my friend until we met the same man who had tried to approach us on the riverbank. He looked as if he was in his late thirties and he wore a sort of People’s Army uniform with a combat cap. Altogether, there were five girls with him, including myself.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/japan/story/0,,2026568,00.html
March 5, 2007
Lee Yong-soo, a Korean, was 15 when snatched from her home in 1944 and taken to work in a military brothel in Taiwan. "The Japanese government is saying there was no coercion involved, but we didn't do this voluntarily," said Ms Lee, who testified at a US House subcommittee last month.
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