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Gil Gained-ok, a survivor of Japan’s wartime navy sexual slavery and a lifelong advocate for justice, has died on the age of 96.
The South Korean authorities confirmed her passing at her residence in Incheon on Sunday, 16 February. The reason for dying was not disclosed, however officers famous she had suffered from Alzheimer’s and age-related illnesses in her last years.
A vocal critic of Japan’s refusal to take obligation for its wartime atrocities, Gil devoted a long time to demanding justice for the tens of 1000’s of ladies, euphemistically referred to as consolation girls, who have been compelled into navy brothels through the Second World Struggle. She maintained that the combat would proceed past her lifetime.
“They’re mistaken in the event that they suppose will probably be over when the final of us die,” she declared in 2013, reported the New York Occasions. “There can be our descendants persevering with to marketing campaign so long as it takes to get the apology we deserve. It is not going to be over with our dying.”
Born in 1928 in Hoichon, in present-day North Korea, Gil was simply 13 when she was taken from her residence in Pyongyang beneath false guarantees of labor and despatched to function a navy intercourse slave for Japanese troopers in northeast China. After a yr, she was launched resulting from extreme sexually transmitted infections. She later returned to China in 1942 to hunt work however was as soon as once more compelled into servitude in a navy brothel.
Following Japan’s defeat in 1945, Gil returned to Korea, by no means marrying and conserving her previous hidden for many years. She made a residing promoting avenue meals and ultimately adopted a son. In 1998, after seeing different survivors protesting in entrance of the Japanese embassy in Seoul, she determined to interrupt her silence and be a part of the motion.
Gil turned a central determine within the marketing campaign, attending weekly protests, talking at worldwide conferences, and travelling the world to amplify the voices of the ladies who had suffered. She additionally based the Gil Gained-ok Ladies’s Peace Prize in 2017, geared toward supporting feminine activists working in the direction of peace and Korean unification.
Her activism occurred towards the backdrop of some of the contentious historic disputes between South Korea and Japan. Whereas Tokyo maintains that previous apologies and a 1965 treaty settled all claims, survivors like Gil rejected this, arguing that their struggling had by no means been correctly addressed.
For a lot of South Koreans, Gil and different survivors symbolised the broader struggling endured beneath Japan’s colonial rule from 1910 to 1945. The motion gained important recognition within the Nineteen Nineties when girls started publicly sharing their experiences, shattering a long time of imposed silence. Historians estimate that as much as 200,000 girls – principally Korean – have been coerced into sexual slavery for the Japanese navy.
Regardless of the painful reminiscences, Gil discovered solace in music, typically saying that singing had helped her endure the trauma. In 2017, she even recorded an album. “Once I was lonely and felt empty at coronary heart, I all the time sang songs to myself,” she as soon as stated.
At her funeral service on Tuesday, mourners paid tribute to her braveness and resilience. Woo Gained-shik, the speaker of the Nationwide Meeting, stated in a press release: “Via her life, now we have seen what human dignity is.”
The Reverend Jeong Seok-won, who led the service, mirrored on the hardships Gil confronted all through her life. “She needed to consistently transfer to keep away from disgrace, but she selected to show her ache so it might not be repeated,” he stated. “She overcame her previous to steer a exceptional life.”
Her dying leaves solely seven registered survivors of Japan’s wartime sexual slavery in South Korea, all aged 90 or older.
