Korea’s oldest surviving former sex slave to Japanese soldiers–known as “comfort women”–recently donated her savings to destitute young girls, touching many Koreans’ hearts.

Kim Bok-duek, one of the victims of Japanese sex slavery during World War II, has decided to donate about $17,000 to Tong-yeong Girls’ High School. The money will be given to students who are in financial difficulties including recipients of livelihood programs and children of families without parents.

Kim was born in Tong-Young, a southern city of the Gyeongsang Provinces of South Korea, in 1918. She was forced to move to China in 1937 during Japan’s colonial rule of Korea and began work as a sex slave at the age of 18. During her time in captivity, she was also taken to other places such as Taiwan and the Philippines by Japanese soldiers. Shortly before Korea’s independence from Japan in 1945, she returned to her hometown after eight years. Her full story is available here.

Even though Kim suffered from adversity, it was not without compensation. The Korean government provided Kim with around 1.1 million Won ($968) every month in supplementary living allowance, which she has been saving. That is the money being donated for destitute students to help them to realize their hopes and dreams for the future.

Lim Soo-ji, the 16-year-old student designated as the first beneficiary of Kim’s donation, has expressed her gratitude to Kim in an interview with Korea’s news agency NEWSis, “I know how much this money means to Kim. The only way I can repay is by studying hard and becoming a good person who can contribute to society.”

During Japan’s colonial rule of Korea, many Korean women were forced by the Japanese government into sexual slavery as “comfort women.” According to the Korean government, it is estimated that almost 200,000 women were taken at that time, most of whom died because of various diseases or from their living situations. Japan has never officially apologized for the transgression.

Since 1992, victims and their supporters have held weekly protests in front of Japan’s embassy in Seoul, requesting compensation and an apology from Japan. In December 2011, they held their 1,000th protest.

The issue of comfort women is becoming urgent because most of the surviving comfort women are well over 80 years old and may die before receiving compensation or an apology from Tokyo. In 2011, an estimated 16 former comfort women died. As of now, only 61 out of 234 women in South Korea’s government register of surviving victims of Japan’s sexual enslavement are alive.

Under the conservative social atmosphere of Korea that prevailed following the war, few comfort women wanted to be seen in public, making it hard to investigate the truth of the crimes against them. After being freed from Japan, most ran away from their families because of shame or tried to hide the fact that they worked as sex slaves. Investigations have later revealed that some of them got married, but could not have a baby or keep their marriages for a long time.

Kim’s case was not that different. However, she decided to fight back and went after the root of Japanese sex slavery by participating in several campaigns for human rights to let people worldwide know the truth about comfort women. She did so right after becoming a member of South Korea’s government register for surviving victims of Japan’s sexual enslavement in 1994.

Kim met with Amnesty International when the organization visited Korea to investigate in 2005. She also visited Japan several times to call for action from the Japanese government to deal with the comfort women issue.

Since her husband passed, Kim has been living by herself at a rented home in Tong-Young city. Her younger brother, who was her only family, died earlier this year. She has difficulty walking because of her knee joints, and her sight is also failing, making her unable to go out without help. This is why her donation to young students is seen as a hugely inspirational story to many South Koreans.

Image Courtesy of  bittermelon

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Paralyzed Veterans of America commends President Obama for stressing the important need to take care of our veterans in Tuesday’s State of the Union address.

In his speech, he said: “Above all, our freedom endures because of the men and women in uniform who defend it. As they come home, we must serve them as well as they’ve served us. That includes giving them the care and the benefits they have earned – which is why we’ve increased annual VA spending every year I’ve been President. And it means enlisting our veterans in the work of rebuilding our nation.”

He then highlighted the new tax credits package that was passed last fall for companies that hire veterans and also spoke about the efforts by first lady Michelle Obama and Jill Biden to get American businesses to secure a pledge of 135,000 jobs for veterans and their families. He also proposed a Veterans Jobs Corps that will help communities hire veterans as cops and firefighters, so that “America is as strong as those who defend her.”

“Paralyzed Veterans of America applauds President Obama for the work he’s done with Congress to continually increase VA funding each year and the efforts he has made to help get our unemployed veterans back to work. We hope the increased funding for VA continues with his budget request for this year,” said Bill Lawson, national president of Paralyzed Veterans of America.

On the complex issue of tackling the problem of unemployment, Lawson welcomed the President making it one of his top priorities. “We need all leaders and all sectors — public and private — to play their part to get this economy moving for everyone and especially our unemployed veterans who have so many great skills to offer and have done so much for our country,” added Lawson.

Immediately following the release of the President’s budget request (expected to be released on February 13), Paralyzed Veterans of America, along with AMVETS, the Disabled American Veterans, and the Veterans of Foreign Wars, will release ‘The Independent Budget’, a comprehensive budget and policy document that outlines veterans’ health-care and benefits funding and policy recommendations for the Department of Veterans Affairs. Please visit www.independentbudget.org or www.pva.org for more information.

Sixty-six years ago, Paralyzed Veterans of America was founded by a band of spinal cord injured service members who returned home from World War II to a grateful nation, but also to a world with few solutions to the challenges they faced. These veterans from the “Greatest Generation” made a decision not just to live, but to live with dignity as contributors to society. They created an organization, dedicated to veterans’ service, medical research, and civil rights for people with disabilities. For more than six decades, Paralyzed Veterans of America and its 34 chapters have been working to create an America where all veterans, their families, and people with disabilities have everything they need to thrive. (www.pva.org).

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Three months after Pearl Harbor, a mission to photograph industrial targets in and around Tokyo was flown by U.S. photo-recon planes. The story is told in ‘Top Secret Flight’ by Dale W. Cox. So secret was the project that it was never revealed in any military history nor reported to the American public.

The source of this information was a captain in the Army Air Corps; an eye witness, he was based at Wright Field in the Engineering Division in charge of modifying three B-17s into the first U.S. photo-recon planes; their mission was to provide aerial photos of Japan for the planned Doolittle Raid.

Before the war, the Japanese had been paranoid about foreigners filming military targets and in January 1942, there was not a single aerial photo of Japan in America.

Flights of this distance, a total of 18,000 miles in three stages, had never been attempted; the longest ever flown before 1942 was Lindberg crossing the Atlantic in 1927, 3600 miles. The longest flight by a standard B-17 was only 2500 miles.

The flight was so classified that the Air Corps captain was not cleared for any operational facts; he did not know the names or numbers of the crews, the take-off dates nor the final results. Regular military channels were deliberately uninformed and intentionally not cleared. Nor was President Roosevelt informed until after the triumph of the Doolittle Raid, launched one month after obtaining the photos; the success of the Doolittle Raid raised the morale of the American people.

Fifty years later, the Air Corps captain, now a Vice President of Lockheed, retired; his last job was as director of the famous Skunk Works. He subsequently revealed his WWII participation to a friend, Dale Cox, whose novel, ‘Top Secret Flight,’ is based on the complexity of planning a pre-emptive strike against Japan in January 1942.

The author, a graduate of the US Naval Academy, was pilot of a photo-reconnaissance plane during the Korean War, overflying China for the CIA.

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