South Korea's wartime sex slaves: Hoping for closure at the end of their lives

The testimony of the women of the House of Sharing is the riposte to those who say there is no evidence that Korean women were forced to sexually service Japanese troops. They gather every Wednesday outside the Japanese Embassy in Seoul or at various South Korean government offices. They unfurl their banners and mostly stand in silence, unflinching as guards snap their pictures. Over 17 years, they have picketed 861 times. Some have traveled to Washington to testify before Congress.

They are host to 30,000 visitors a year at the House of Sharing, part of a complex that includes the Historical Museum of Japanese Military Sexual Slavery.

They have been poked and prodded like laboratory specimens, their daily lives chronicled by sociologists, their rudimentary artwork studied to gauge the long-term emotional effects of trauma.

Now, many are tired, their years as rabble-rousers behind them. There's a changing of the guard. With a gruff, drill sergeant's demeanor, Kim Kun-ja calls herself a "troublemaker." For years, she was among the loudest activists. The others call her No. 1.

Today the 84-year-old uses a walker. She fell twice recently and rarely gets out of bed.

"We are all mentally ill and physically damaged," she says, eating a bowl of soup. "But I don't want to talk about it anymore. It brings up bad memories from the bottom of my insides."

In her place has emerged the indefatigable Kang. As a teenager, she recalls, she was lured from her home by Japanese soldiers who offered her caramel candy.

On this day, Kang receives a group of 20 mothers who sit in a semicircle on the dormitory floor. Perched on the edge of a couch, dressed in a silk shirt with a scarf wrapped stylishly around her neck, she waves her hands like a veteran politician trying to stir up a crowd.

With age, she has become more defiant, she says, and she is looking for justice.

"We have to resolve this problem before we die," she says. "We have to go away if God calls us, but until this is solved, I can't close my eyes happily."

Kang calls over to Kim, asking her to address the group.

Kim waves her off. "I am deaf," she says.

Nearby, resident Kim Soon-ok, 88, maternally strokes the hair of a visitor half her age who sits before her on the floor.

Some residents, never married, have no grandchildren to visit them. They welcome contact with strangers. They hold hands with visitors and seek long hugs as a grandfather clock in the corner ticks away their remaining days.