Pak OngIyeon
91 years old
(DOB 1920)
• Resident at the House of Sharing
Biography
Pan Onglyeon was born in Muju City, Jeolla Province in Southwestern Korea in 1920. At sixteen she was married off into a poor family, but she fled and at the age of eighteen she remarried. But after difficult and arduous days, her husband sold her off to an employment agency. In 1941, at the age of twenty three, she was taken to the small island of Rabaul in Papua New Guinea, the scene of some of the greatest battles in the Southern Pacific theater, and made a "comfort woman" of the Japanese military. As the Japanese base on Rabaul faced constant bombardment, she was evacuated twice by ship, but because of fierce bombardment and rough seas, both ships were sunk and she was brought back both times to the island. Of fifty girls and women she was one of only four survivors. In 1944 she narrowly caught another boat that took her to Shimonoseki, Japan, and from there she was able to return to Korea safely in 1945.
Testimony
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