The statue symbolizes Korean women who were forced to serve as sexual slaves for front-line Japanese soldiers during the war. According to historians, up to 200,000 women, mostly Koreans, were coerced into sexual servitude at front-line Japanese brothels during the war when the Korean Peninsula was a Japanese colony. Those sex slaves were euphemistically called “comfort women.” Some Japanese claim that women simply wanted to work as prostitutes and signed up to live in concentration camp whore houses. Japanese claim that Dutch missionary wives captured in the East Indies suddenly wanted to become prostitutes for Japanese soldiers.

