That is the second statue outside South Korea that honors the Comfort Women. It is the same statue as the first statue that faces the Japanese Embassy in Seoul, but this one depicts two young girls, one Korean and the second Chinees. They are sitting, and next to them is an empty chair.
Comfort Women is a euphemistic term given to more than 200,000 girls and women from China, New Guinea, Burma, the Philippines, and Korea, who during WW2 were kidnapped from their homes, trafficked, and held in captivity at front-line brothels by the Japanese army. They were sex slaves and suffered from violence, rape and lived in inhuman conditions. These crimes got worldwide attention only in 1991, when Kim Hak-sun, a comfort woman survivor, testified for the first time on her experiences as a Korean comfort woman. This testimony opened the subject worldwide, and in China, movies and books led to increased public awareness and the establishment of a museum and several statues.
Su Zhiliang, a professor at Shanghai Normal University and an expert on the issue of comfort women, led to the erection of the statue. He also promoted the Comfort Women’s Museum and Archives that opened the same day the sculptures were dedicated, on October 22nd, 2016. Two of the few remaining survivors attended the dedication ceremony – Lee Yoon-soo (88) and Chen Liancun (90). They were very excited to get some recognition for the crimes they had suffered.
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