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Former comfort woman Kang Il-chul condemns the Dec. 2015 comfort women agreement between South Korea and Japan

A former comfort woman is visiting the US state of Georgia to testify to the horrors of her experience. The visit by Kang Il-chul, 89, comes in the wake of remarks by Takashi Shinozuka, Japan‘s consul general in Atlanta, who referred to comfort women as “paid prostitutes.”

House of Sharing, a facility in Gwangju, Gyeonggi Province, where a number of comfort women survivors currently live, said Kang would visit the US from June 28 to July 3 to attend an unveiling ceremony for a comfort woman statue in the small Georgia city of Brookhaven. Kang was invited to attend the ceremony, to be held at Brookhaven Park at 10 am on June 30.

Kang asked the local Korean-American community in Atlanta to put up the statue after an Aug. 2015 visit to testify to her horrific experience as a comfort woman. The Brookhaven statue is the third comfort woman statue to be set up in the US. The Atlanta Comfort Woman Memorial Task Force is also holding a Korean-American community event for the eve of the unveiling on June 29, where Kang will appear to share her experience.

House of Sharing director Ahn Shin-gwon said the organization would be “joining forces with several US groups to set up more comfort women statues in the US to response to the continued misstatements from Japan and share the truth and the terrible experiences of the comfort women survivors.”

By Kim Gi-seong, south Gyeonggi correspondent

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