The Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan commonly known as The Korean Council is a Korean non-governmental organization advocating the rights of the surviving comfort women and lobbying the Japanese government to take actions of a full apology and compensation. Since its foundation in , the Korean Council has been operating on national and transnational stages.
Within South Korea, the council has been helping the former comfort women and encouraging the Korean government to resolve the issue. At the same time, the council has been asserting responsibilities of Japan and bringing the issue to international human rights forum such as the UN Commission on Human Rights and the Asian Solidarity Conference. The movements of the council are directly concerned to recover the human rights of the victims of Japanese military sexual slavery, and are broadly in pursuit of preventing wartime crime against women and building peace.
This term jeongsindae teishin-tai literally means "voluntarily-submitting-body corps". Among the estimated total of , women, percent were recruited from Korea [5] because of its status under Japanese colonization. There are officially registered victims in South Korea, [6] although it is very likely that there are more unknown survivors.
The issue of the comfort women began to emerge only in the late s with democratization. In a more open atmosphere, there was a group of progressive Christian women starting to inquire into the issue of comfort women. Subsequently, the claim of a Japanese official completely denying state involvement in the recruitment by laying the blame on the private traffickers triggered the formation of a coalition which established the Korean Council for Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan in November under the leadership of Yun Chung-ok [ ko ] and Lee Hyo-chae [ ko ].
In , Kim Hak Sun , a former comfort woman, contacted the Korean Council and revealed her story on televised broadcast. Her initiative encouraged other survivors to share their experiences, so the Korean Council installed a hotline for them. Prompted by a series of revelations, the Ministry of Health and Welfare was established to officially recognize the victims and provide them financial aid, free health care, and the right to rent public housing.
