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Part of an ambitious exhibition with the Hayward Gallery and Autograph ABP to document the contemporary face of modern slavery. Chris Steele Perkins' creates an intimate series of portraits of Korea's 'comfort women', civilians forced into sexual slavery during WWII.

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‘Comfort Women’ with the Hayward Gallery and Autograph ABPChris Steele-Perkins
KOREA. 2006. Comfort women. Pak Ok-Seon. Born in 1924. She was from a poor family of 8 children.She went with friends to find work in a textile plant in China, but there was made a sex slave in Manturia for four years. She tried to commit suicide a number of times. She escaped when the sex station was bombed. She is still scared of Japanese and has had no compensation.
© Chris Steele-Perkins | Magnum Photos
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KOREA. 2006. Comfort women. Kil Won Ok. She was thirteen when she was taken to Beijing by the Japanese to help build a factory. A friend told here there was a place to make a lot of money and they took a train there but they were put into a sex station where they were beaten frequently if they resisted. They also had their feet stamped on as punishment.Now is the happiest time of her life.
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KOREA. 2006. Comfort women. Park Ok-ryun. Born 1919. Aged 20, her abusive husband sold her to an employment agency and told her she would be washing clothes and caring for wounded soldiers. She was sent to Papua New Guinea and discovered she was to be a sex slave. From 7 am to 4 pm she had to have sex with private soldiers, from 4 pm to 7 pm they were non-commissioned officers and from 7 pm to 10 pm officers. In principle the time assigned to a solder was one hour but there were too many to keep that schedule. She would have sex with up to 30 soldiers daily.
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KOREA. 2006. Comfort women. Yi Okseon. Born 1927. She was abducted from a bar when she was 16 by two men and taken to work building a Japanese airport. When she protested she and was taken to a sex station and made to have sex 40 to 50 times a day. When she complained she was stabbed in the arm and beaten so badly her eyesight and hearing were permanently damaged. One girl from the same sex station who protested was stabbed to death in front of her and thrown in the street to be eaten by dogs.
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KOREA. 2006. Comfort women. Kang Ilchul. Born 1928. She was taken by a military police office saying she was being conscripted for the National Guard. Instead she was taken to a sex station in China where she was raped until her vagina bled. Twice she attempted suicide. She is not interested in financial compensation but wants public acknowledgement by the Japanese.
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KOREA. 2006. Comfort women. Lee Sun Duk. She was 17 years old and working on a farm harvesting when she was taken by a Japanese soldier. She was put in a room with 15 other girls and then taken to Shanghai and made to work at a sex station. There she was frequently beaten for resisting and this has damaged her eyesight. She had to have sex every day of the year. When she finally came home both her parents had died.
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KOREA. 2006. Comfort women. Jang Jum Dol. She was 14 and on the way to do laundry when she was taken by a Japanese man and told she was going to a factory to make money, but she was tied up in a house with an 11 year old girl and then taken with some other girls to Manchuria. She tried to escape and was captured and beaten and kept at a sex station with a wire fence around it. She had three children there and two of them died, the surviving girl had a weak heart. She had to continue as a sex slave. When she came back to Korea with her daughter after the war she was so poor she had to sleep in the streets.
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KOREA. 2006. Comfort women. Kim Ginja. Oldest of three daughters, her father died when she was ten and then her mother died when she was fourteen and was adopted into her aunt's family. Aged seventeen she was made to get a job and was taken by a Korean agent to a "comfort Station".Her first trade was with an officer who smashed her eardrum when she refused him. After that she had to service officers on weekdays and ordinary soldiers on weekends. Every friday she had a medical check for STD.She was liberated when she was twenty.
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KOREA. 2006. Comfort women. Kim Soon Ak. Born 1928. She is the eldest child and only daughter of poor farmers. She remembers she was wearing a white top and black skirt when she was taken to work, as she was told, in a thread factory. She was taken on a 4 day journey to Mongolia and made to work in a sex station, aged 17. On weekends, even when she had a period, she was made to have 20 to 30 soldiers who stood in line outside.When she came home she learned her father had died of grief over loosing her.Until the Comfort Women movement started she told no one of her past.She still wishes she could have worn the wedding veil.
© Chris Steele-Perkins | Magnum Photos
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KOREA. 2006. Lee Yong Soo, born in 1928, came from a poor family. Her mother worked as a nanny, and her father delivered rice. She was 16 when a friend called her out of the house to meet a Japanese man who gave her a dress and leather shoes and promised more if they came and worked for him. There were four other girls, including her friend, with the man, and she was too excited to ask about where they were going. They traveled for several days to the north of Korea to work harvesting radishes. The man's behavior changed, and he beat them if they made mistakes or complained. After a month, they were taken by a Japanese naval ship to Taiwan. The girls were raped repeatedly on the journey, and Lee Yong Soo contracted a sexually transmitted disease. In Taiwan, they were forced to work in a "Comfort Station," where they had to have sex three or four times a day, even when they had their periods. They were beaten and electrocuted if they resisted. They mainly had to service Kamikaze pilots before suicide missions. She was not allowed to speak Korean and was given the name Doshiko. She was never paid. One pilot whom she had sexually infected previously fell in love with her and before his fatal mission came and gave her his final possessions: a photo and his toiletries. He told her the disease was a gift from her, Doshiko, to him. He was gentle, and he taught her a song:
Take off bravely.
Leaving Shin-jook Crossing over the clouds
There is no one to see me off
Only one crying for me.
Doshiko.
After the war was over, she found her way home, and her mother, believing her dead, was frightened and thought she was a ghost. She feels much better now that she has revealed what happened to her as a sex slave. She never married and lives alone, 2006.
© Chris Steele-Perkins | Magnum Photos
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