Kim's death means there are now only 88 surviving women who were forced into sexual slavery by Japan during World War II registered with the Korean government. Activists worry more of the aged victims will die without receiving an apology or compensation from the Japanese government.

More than 200,000 women, mostly from Korea and also from other Asian countries, were sexually enslaved by Japan during the war.

Euphemistically called "comfort women," they were victims of Japan's imperial expansion and colonization of the Korean Peninsula from 1910 to 1945.

Kim, born in 1928 in Gyeongsan, a rural town in North Gyeongsang Province in the country's southeast, was taken on a hoax job offer to Harbin in eastern China, then Inner Mongolia and to a comfort women facility in Beijing in 1943.

From there, she was forced to provide sex for Japanese soldiers in northeastern China for two years until Japanese colonial rule ended in 1945 following Japan's defeat in the war, according to the Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan, a Seoul-based group that supports former sex slaves by, among other activities, organizing protests against the Japanese government.

2010.01.03