Two elderly Korean victims of Japan’s wartime sexual slavery died on Tuesday.
 
Lee Soo-dan died of a chronic disease at an old people’s home in China’s Heilongjiang Province. She was 95.
 
During Japan’s colonial rule of Korea, Lee became a sexual slavery victim after she answered an ad posted at her hometown of Pyongyang for a factory job in Harbin, China.
 
Sexual slavery victims in Harbin were abandoned by Japan’s military after the end of the Second World War and were not able to return to their homeland after their government failed to show any interest in them.
 
The Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan said that another victim, Gong Jeom-yeop, who lived in Haenam, South Korea died at the age of 96. Gong was receiving treatment at a local hospital for a year-and-a-half after suffering a stroke. 
 
Gong was forcibly drafted in 1935 when she was 16, and had to endure terrifying ordeals until 1943.
 
With the two deaths, the number of surviving victims out of 238 registered sexual enslavement victims slipped to 42.