South Korea Releases First-Ever Footage of Wartime Sex Slaves

South Korea has released what it believes to be the first known footage of wartime sex slaves forced to serve the Japanese military.Footage provided by Seoul City and Seoul National University’s Human Rights Center on July 5 shows a group of women standing in a line and talking to a soldier. Professor Kang Sung-hyun, who took part in the research, said in a press conference in Seoul that the women’s appearance and that they were bare feet mean they were likely slaves.The 18-second clip was filmed by American troops in China’s Yunnan province in 1944, and was found in the US National Archives by researchers from the Seoul National University, BBC and The Washington Post reported. Photographs featuring the same group of women were released in 2000 and Park Young-shim, a former sex slave who died in 2006, identified herself in the pictures, The Korea Herald reported.The footage is said to be the first moving picture that shows Japan’s “trafficking of Asian women,” according to the Human Rights Center. Professor Kang said it would “strengthen the admissibility of evidence behind wartime sex slavery.”At least 200,000 women from China, Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia and the Philippines were forced to become sex slaves for the Japanese military during the World War II. Japan surrendered in 1945 after the US detonated atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Credit: Seoul City and Seoul National University Human Rights Center via Storyful