North Korea has urged Japan to address North Korean “comfort women” in its efforts to resolve disputes over the issue with neighboring South Korea. As many as 200,000 women, mostly from Korea and China, were forced into the Japanese Army’s brothels during World War II. Seoul and Tokyo have been at odds over how to portray the Japanese Army’s wartime atrocities since Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe took office in December, 2012. Four 'Comfort Girls' captured in the hills of Luzon, play mahjong during recess period in woman's detention home on outskirts of Manila. Earlier this week, the two sides agreed to accelerate talks over the issue during the first summit meeting in more than three years. “This issue can hardly find a final solution unless the damage suffered by all Koreans is redressed throughout Korea because there are victims of the sexual slavery of the Imperial Japanese Army not only in the south of Korea but also in the north,” said a spokesperson for North Korea’s Foreign Ministry in a statement carried by the country’s state-controlled media Korean Central News Agency. Pyongyang has claimed compensation from Tokyo for the aggression in the past, but the latest move comes at a delicate time. North Korea is facing growing criticism for its human rights record. http://www.voanews.com/content/north-korea-raises-comfort-women-issue/3044339.html It's generally believed that the comfort system was a system of forced prostitution organised by the Japanese military but the majority of adult comfort women voluntarily agreed to participate in the system in exchange for a substantial amount of money (300-1,000 yen), which amounted to tens of thousands of dollars in today's monetary value, upon which a middle-class family could get by for an entire year. Many comfort women described themselves as barmaids when they were captured by the US military, as they were aware of the nature of their profession, and a Dutch investigation found that only 65 of 200-300 Dutch comfort women existed in the Dutch East Indies were forced into prostitution, meaning that up to 80% of Dutch comfort women were common prostitutes. Nevertheless, there were teen comfort women mostly from destitute families in Korea, who were sold into prostitution and held against their will at comfort stations, and those former comfort women in their 80s are entitled to receive reparations from the Japanese government.
