Kim Rahn is the managing editor of The Korea Times. Since joining the company in 2003, she has covered various beats including the presidential office, Seoul city government, the Bank of Korea and the tourism industry. In 2014, she won the Society of Publishers in Asia (SOPA) award for her coverage of the ordeals of migrant women in Korea.
Former sex slave Hwang Seon-sun dies
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Hwang Seon-sun, a former sex slave for Japanese soldiers during World War II, appears in a televised interview in 2013. She died of old age Monday. / Captured from EBS
By Kim Rahn
By Kim Rahn
Hwang Seon-sun, a former sex slave forced to serve Japanese soldiers during World War II, died of old age Monday. She was 89.
She was pronounced dead at a hospital in South Jeolla Province at around 8 a.m., according to the Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan.
A memorial altar was set up at the hospital, and a funeral service will be held in private on Wednesday.
With Hwang’s death, only 54 Korean victims of wartime sexual slavery are still alive. A total of 238 people were registered with the government as such victims.
Born in 1926 in Jangseong of the province, Hwang lost her parents when young and lived with a younger brother. When she was 17, a neighbor said he would help her work at a factory in Busan. She followed the man but was eventually forced into sexual slavery.
Hwang was moved from Busan to Japan and eventually to a military brothel in Nauru in the South Pacific. She served Japanese soldiers there for three years until the war ended.
Hwang returned to her hometown afterward, but suffered from not only financial difficulty but also diseases such as shingles, cerebral infarction and diabetes.
Despite some symptoms of dementia, Hwang could remember the names of Japanese Imperial Army ships and aircraft which carried her to the brothel on the small island country, according to the council.
Monday was also the first anniversary of the death of another victim, Hwang Geum-ja.