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Young N. Korean defectors visit former comfort women

Posted August. 13, 2014 05:49,   

한국어

It’s like a prison. How scared they would have been….”

Kim Yoo-jin (pseudonym), a 23-year-old North Korean defector who came to South Korea this year, said after she visited a five square-meter room on Tuesday. The room was created like a military brothel for Japanese soldiers under the colonial rule and located at the museum located in the House of Sharing in Gwangju, Gyeonggi Province, where 10 former comfort women live. There were some 20 letters sent from the world in the room, which was made based on the women’s testimonies. Kim and her friends seriously read the postcards on the bed one by one.

Ten young North Korean defectors who recently arrived in Korea met former comfort women at the House of Sharing, the living witnesses of the Korean history around the country’s independence. The Security Department of Gangnam Police Station in Seoul hosted the event to help them learn history and increase their identity as a Korean and to remind them of the meaning of Independence Day. North Korean defectors bowed to former comfort women -- Kim Gun-ja, 88, Jeong Bok-soo, 88, Yoo Hee-nam, 85 and Kim Oi-han (80). They held the young people’s hands, saying, “How tough your journey to the South would have been.”