Kim Hak Sun was the former comfort woman to announce she was willing to publicly tell her story, as part of legal action against the Japanese government. Her example gave others the courage to join her in a class action which was launched in the Tokyo Distric Court on 6 December 1991. The women are demanding compensation, as well as Japanese government admission that force was used to recruit them. Their case is moving slowly on. As Asia-wide moverment is also emerging on the issue.
Asian governments have to varying degrees supported women in their own countries.
But because many countries are dependent on Japan for aid and inverstment, such support can be less than wholehearted. In February 1993, a group of Japanese scholars called on their government to break a long taboo and allow school history books to cover atrocities committed during Japan's colonial rule in Korea, from 1910 to 1945. Until now, the Education Ministry has kept any reference to comfort women out of the nation's textbooks. As the women continue to speak out, this deliberate historical blindness will become harder to sustain.