慰安妇
Comfort women were women who worked as prostitutes in brothels in Japanese-occupied countries during World War II. There is much controversy surrounding this subject namely, to what extent the women were forced and to who moral culpability falls on. On one side, some groups in Japan claimed that prior to Japanese expansion, brothels always existed in the eastern and southeastern regions of Asia in order to service European and American sailors and merchant vessels. According to Bradley Martin, a journalist and expert on Korean history, claims the majority of comfort women actually volunteered to work in the brothels, as employment in the occupied areas was very limited. On the other side, most nations in the world believe that the majority of comfort women were young girls abducted from their homes and forced into prostitution by the Japanese government and Imperial Japanese Army as sexual slaves and demand Japan take responsibility and formally apologize and educate the next generation about such atrocity.