SEOUL - The Seoul government has released rare video footage of Korean women forced to work in Japanese military brothels during World War Two, the first time moving images have been shown of the "comfort women".
A government-funded research team from Seoul National University found the footage, which was filmed in by an American soldier, in the United States National Archives after a two-year hunt.
The second black-and-white clip shows seven women lined up outside a brick house, being questioned by Chinese soldiers. The women were found by US-China allied forces in China's Yunnan province, the research team said in a statement.
The women were registered by US soldiers, the research team said. Two of the women in the video had already appeared in previously released photos of "comfort women". The term is used to describe girls and women from South Korea, China, the Philippines and elsewhere, who were forced into prostitution in Japanese wartime military brothels. Japan and South Korea agreed to resolve the issue "finally and irreversibly" in if all conditions were met.
Japan wants South Korea to remove a statue near the Japanese consulate in Busan city commemorating Korean comfort women, as well as another near the Japanese embassy in Seoul, saying that the presence of the statues violates the agreement. South Korean President Moon Jae-in suggested during his campaign for a May 9 election that most South Koreans did not accept the deal negotiated by his conservative predecessor Park Geun-hye and Japanese PM Shinzo Abe, and that he could try to renegotiate it.
