Portrait of Lee Ok-seon’s grandmother. Provided by House of Sharing
Lee Ok-sun, a comfort woman victim of the Japanese army, passed away on the afternoon of 26. 94 years old
The House of Sharing, a social welfare company, announced on the 27th that Lee passed away at Bundang Jesaeng Hospital around 10:00 pm on the 26th due to chronic illness.
The deceased was born in Daegu in 1928 (born in 1930 according to the registration of residents), and in 1942, when he turned 14, he was forcibly taken to China after being invited by a Japanese to give him a job. For the next three years he lived the hard life of a comfort woman victim of the Japanese military. After the late Kim Hak-soon returned to Korea in 1981 and revealed that she was a victim of a comfort woman in 1991, two years later, in 1993, she informed the Korean government that she was a victim of a comfort woman.
Since 2014, he has been living back and forth between the House of Sharing and the House of Boeun on Songnisan Mountain, and since 2018, he has settled in the House of Sharing. To obtain an apology from the Japanese government during his lifetime, the deceased carried out various activities, such as filing a claim for damages against the Japanese government in solidarity with the grandmothers of the House of Sharing.
With Lee’s death, the number of survivors of the 240 comfort women registered with the government dropped to 10.
The mortuary of the deceased was set up at Gyeongan Funeral Home No. 101 in Gwangju, Gyeonggi-do. The funeral is at 8am on December 29th.
