Japan,Korea comfort women

On a winding country road, shadowed by South Korea's mountainous countryside, sits a strange building, jutting awkwardly from the cottages and tomato farms around it.

A sweeping arched portico looks down sternly on the narrow lane, from where you can glimpse the striking statues and memorials inside. There's a gravel car park, bigger than the building's nine elderly residents would normally warrant, and leaflets at the door in English, Japanese and Korean.

Because, despite the game shows blaring from the living room television, this isn't your typical retirement home. It's a living museum, known as the House of Sharing, and its statues and plaques tell the story of its residents' unusual lives - as "comfort women" for Japan's wartime army.

The youngest resident is now 84, but as young women during World War II, all say they were forced to work as sex slaves in Japan's military brothels.

Yi Ok-seon is a frail old lady with a walking frame who has difficulty speaking. But her eyes, when you meet them, are still sharp.

She says she was 15 when a Korean and a Japanese man forcibly took her to north-west China, then under Japanese control. She had been begging her parents to send her to school for years, but with a dozen children to feed, they couldn't afford it. At the time she was taken, Ok-seon was working away from the family home.

Once in China, she says she was forced into sexual slavery for three years, in "comfort stations" set up by the Japanese military to service its troops.

"I felt really violated, being tricked and taken like that as a young teenager," she says. "It was like a slaughter house there - not for animals, but for humans. Outrageous things were done."

She shows me old scars on her arms and legs - from being stabbed, she says. A volunteer at the house tells me later that she sustained other injuries from that time, preventing her from bearing her own children.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22680705

Structure of the lead:

  Who- The youngest resident, Yi Ok-seon

  When- not given

  What- forced to work as sex slaves in Japan's military brothels

  Why- not given

  Where- South Korea's mountainous countryside

  How- not given

Keywords:

1.      forcibly 強制

2.      wartime army 戰時軍隊

3.      slaughter house 屠宰場

4.      scars 傷疤

5.      stab 刺