User:Rjl1995/sandbox

== Kim Hak-sun == Kim Hak-sun was a Korean human rights activist who campaigned against sex slavery and wartime sexual violence. Hak-sun was among many young women, referred to euphemistically as “comfort women”, who was forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese Imperial Army between the early 1930s up until the end of the Pacific War. She is known as the first woman to come forward publicly as a former comfort woman in August, 1991. At a press conference, she described her suffering as a comfort woman.[1] She said that seeing the Japanese imperial flag "still makes me shudder. Until now, I did not have the courage to speak, even though there are so many thing I want to say." [2] In December, 1991, she filed a class-action lawsuit against the Japanese government.[3][4] At that time, she was the first of what would become dozens of women from Korea, China, Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia, and the Netherlands who came forward to tell their stories of being forced to be sex slaves of the Japanese military. She was the lead plaintiff and initially the only one to use her real name in connection with the case.[4] She was inspired to finally take her story public after 40 years of silence, by the growth of the women's rights movement in South Korea.[5] Kim died in 1997, with the court case still ongoing.

Early Years
Kim Hak-sun was born in 1924 in Jilin, China. She and her mother returned to Pyongyang after the death of her father, who passed away when she was only three months old. While living in Pyongyang, Hak-sun attended a missionary school where she held fond memories of "lessons, sports, and playing with my friends." At the age of 14, her mother remarried. Hak-sun had a difficult time becoming accustomed to her stepfather and eventually rebelled, causing her mother to send her to live with a foster family who trained kisaeng. She attended the academy for two years where she learned many forms of entertainment, including the art of dance, song, and pansori, among other things. She graduated at the age of 17 and was thus unable to obtain a license to work as a kisaeng, which required a minimum age of 19. Her foster father was subsequently unable to find work for her in Korea, and so sought out opportunities in China.

Life as a Comfort Woman
Hak-sun's travels with her foster father eventually brought her to Beijing. Upon their arrival, they were approached by a Japanese soldier who took her foster father aside, suspecting him to be a spy. Hak-sun was subsequently abducted by other Japanese soldiers and was taken to a comfort station where she was forced to work as a comfort woman along with four other Korean women. During her stay, she was given the Japanese name, Aiko. After four months had passed, Hak-sun managed to escape the comfort station she was being held at with the help of a Korean man who later became her husband and the father of her two children.

After the Escape
Shortly after the liberation of Korea in 1945, Hak-sun and her family returned to Korea. She lived in a refugee camp in Seoul for three months, where her daughter passed away from cholera. Some time after 1953, her husband passed away due to fatal wounds incurred when the roof of a building he had been working in collapsed on top of him. Upon recalling the death of her husband, Hak-sun said:"I had suffered so much, living with this man who had supposedly been my husband. When he was drunk and aggressive, because he knew that I had been a comfort woman, he would insult me with words that had cut me to the heart. . . . He had tortured me mentally so much that I did not miss him a lot."Her young son would later pass away due to a heart attack while swimming at sea.