Treat of the month of March or Women's month : former 'comfort woman' bids for Assembly seat

A former sex slave for Japanese soldiers has made a bid toa run for the parliamentary elections.

Lee Yong-soo, 84, said Wednesday she has applied for candidacy of the main opposition Democratic United Party to become a lawmaker.

She announced the bid after the regular Wednesday rally by former “comfort women” which has been held over 1,000 times since 1992.

“I applied for the candidacy through the Internet Tuesday evening. If I take a seat at the National Assembly, I’ll solve issues surrounding victims of Japanese colonial rule as their representative,” Lee said.

“I may face death soon, and these days I often dream of those who died before me. I want to solve the issues and if I meet them in heaven, I want to tell them I did it,” she said.

Lee added she’ll also make efforts for human rights of women in North Korea and other parts of Asia.

She was forced to provide sex to Japanese soldiers in Taiwan at the age of 15 and came back home to Daegu in 1945 after Korea’s liberation.

Lee was the representative for plaintiffs in a suit against the state in 2004. The court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs and ordered Seoul to disclose the Korea-Japan treaty on the compensation of war victims. In 2007, she also testified about her suffering at a hearing of the U.S. House of Representative, which adopted a resolution on comfort women denouncing Japan’s sexual slavery.