Bae Choonhui Halmoni

88 years old (DOB 1923) • Resident at the House of Sharing

Biography

Bae Chunhui was born in 1923 in Seongju, Northern Gyeongsang Province in Southeastern Korea.  At the age of nineteen, one day when she was spending time with her friend Bongsun, she heard about local recruitment for the Women's Voluntary Labor Corps.  There she was told she would earn money, but not that she would be forced to provide sex to soldiers, and she and Bongsun volunteered together.  However, rather than being given a job, she was taken to Manchuria, and forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military.  At the end of the war, she was unable to return directly into Korea, and after remaining for six years in now-Chinese Manchuria, she crossed to Japan in 1951.  She remained there for thirty years and returned to Korea in 1981.

Testimony


   
Bae Choonhui Halmoni
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