Aged only 14, Kim Bok-dong had never ventured more than a few kilometres from the southern Korean town of Yangsan when she was offered work in a factory, to support the war effort of the occupying Japanese empire.
Warned that a refusal could harm her family, she assented, never suspecting that she would spend the next four years being transported round southeast Asia to be systematically raped by hundreds of Japanese soldiers.
After her return home following the second world war, it took months for Ms Kim to admit to her family what had happened to her. When she did so, their response only reinforced her feelings of shame. “They said: ‘How could any human being do such a thing?’” she recalls. “They were talking about the Japanese – and me, as well.”