Two South Korea's former comfort women pose for camera during their photo exhibition in Seoul in December of 2006. The 79-year-old Shim Soon-Ak (left) and 85-year-old Shim Dal-Yeon were among the 140 living ex-sex slaves for soldiers of the Imperial Japanese Army. As many as 200,000 Korean women were coerced or forced to serve as sex slaves for the Japanese soldiers during the Pacific War. In Shim Soon-Ak's case, she went to Manchuria for money and was sold to the Japanese Army there. She is extremely worried that her own children would know about her past. Her only wish is to have a wedding ceremony in traditional way. Shim Dal-Yeon was kidnapped by Japanese soldiers near her village in Chilgok County in North Gyeongsang Province. At age 12 she was put on the military truck and was taken to the Japanese military in Taiwan where she was forced to have sex with Japanese soldiers. She was so brutally abused by the soldiers that she was not able to speak later. He only wish is to find out her older sister who was also taken with her to the Japanese military.

To Whom It May Concern,

The captions of your Comfort Woman Photo Gallery at HERE.

contain a serious factual error. Comfort woman DOES NOT equal sex slave. Some WERE sex slaves, but that is not to say that they all were. An exerpt: "Imperial Japanese Army first introduced "a system of military sexual slavery" or euphemistically "comfort woman system" for its soldiers in 1932."

I suggest: The Imperial Japanese Army first introduced a system of military prostitution euphemistically called the "comfort woman system" for its soldiers in 1932. With increasing frequency until 1945, some women were in fact forced to serve in this system as sex slaves.

To say anything else is to distort the facts so much as make the discussion riduculous and unresolvable. It plays right into the hands of those who try deny the sexual slavery practiced by the IJA, because it is easy provable that not ALL comfort women were sex slaves. It makes your publication look ridiculous where I would rather it be seen as reputable. Please correct this.