'Comfort Women' are the women who were abducted by the Japanese military and raped during Japan’s colonization of Korea. In Korean, we call them “Jung Sin Dae.” “Jung Sin Dae” was a noun that described organizations that specifically provided manpower in order to strengthen Japan’s military under imperialism during the war. However, by the end of the pacific war in 1943, people tended to limit its use to indicate comfort women, and finally in August 1944, government issued “Female Jung Sin Dae Labor Statement.” Ever since, “Jung Sin Dae” was only used to indicate females who were mobilized during the war.

Comfort women who were organized under “Female Comfort Women Labor Statement” were organized to supplement labor due to the loss in labor during the war. Therefore, female labor Jung Sin Dae and Japanese military’s comfort women were fundamentally different.

Japanese government institutionalized comfort houses during the China and Japan war and the Pacific War. Comfort houses were a place where comfort women were confined and military troops came in groups in order to gratify their lust. The Japanese Military abducted countless women and sent them to the front line, and systematically forced them into sex slavery. The abducted women were stationed at different comfort houses, and repeatedly raped. They used to be called “Jong-goon we ahn boo’ (從軍慰安婦). However, that word assumes a voluntary action rather than a forced action; therefore it is not an appropriate expression. Internationally,

expressions such as “sex-slaves” and “rape victims” are used, and those are the words that most appropriately convey the essence of the nature. We currently address them as “Japanese Military’s We Ahn Boo(comfort women).” The word ‘Jung Sin Dae’ which is presently familiar to the general crowd via mass media means a military unit that sacrificed their bodies for the country. The word, “Jung Shin Dae”, used to be used with the same meaning as “Japanese Military’s We Ahn Boo”, and started to appear on newspapers in 1940s. During this period of time, “Jung Shin Dae” meant women who were working at factories that made products that were military-related. A lot of women who used to work at factories were abducted by Japanese military and used as comfort women, and that is why the word “Jung Shin Dae” was used to mean comfort women. However, “Jung Shin Dae” is necessarily not the same word as comfort women. We estimate that about 200,000 Korean women were abducted by the Japanese military as comfort women. Most of them died, and there are only 158 comfort women who have identified themselves as comfort women to the Korean government since 1992. Of these, about forty women died, and the comfort women who are still alive, including ones that are not included in the government’s statistics, total about one hundred forty one. Nine of them currently live in the House of Sharing, which is a registered social welfare organization.