hankyoreh

In New York

By Kwon Tae-ho, Washington Correspondent and Jung Nam-ku Tokyo Correspondent

On the 1,000th Wednesday Demonstration, the world took the wrinkled hands of former “comfort women,” who had been coerced to serve as sex slaves for the Japanese military during World War II. Several thousand people in 42 cities in eight countries came together in solidarity on a Wednesday when they shared sadness and anger at the war crime of kidnapping young girls at the age of 15 and using them as sex slaves, forcing them to service an average of 30 Japanese soldiers a day.

At an event at Queensborough Community College in New York, holocaust survivors Hanne Liebmann and Ethel Katz offered consolation to surviving comfort women Lee Yong-su, 83, and Lee Ok-seon, 85.

Katz told them that in life, if you make efforts toward the goals you have to achieve, you can find the strength to achieve them. On Dec. 14, local Korean groups plan to hold a “simultaneous world solidarity Wednesday Demonstration” in front of the Japanese embassy in Washington DC.

In front of the Japanese embassy in the Canadian capital, Ottawa, a protest rally expressing solidarity with the comfort women will take place on the same day. A group of more than 300 teachers, students and other citizens, led by members of a local history group, plan to submit a document demanding an official apology to the Japanese embassy after holding the rally.

Women’s groups in Taiwan, following a demand for an apology from Japan to the victims of the comfort woman system on Dec. 13, commemorated the 1,000th Wednesday Demonstration by holding a candlelit concert in Taipei on December 14. Filipino women’s groups also sent a message of support, saying, “We admire the will of the comfort women in their 80s who continue to drag their aging bodies out to demonstrate, despite the fact that there have been no changes. They will receive support and respect from the world.”

In Tokyo, on the same day, more than 1,300 people took part in an event to surround Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs with a human chain, organized by a national network formed last year in order to solve the comfort women issue through joint activity.

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