But the two men by the statues belonged to a Hong Kong group that calls itself “Defend the Diaoyutai,” referring to a set of islands claimed by both China and Japan. (Japan calls the islands the Senkaku.) Most of the banners hanging by the bronze girls carried anti-Japanese slogans: “Oppose Abe remilitarization” and “The Diaoyutai are Chinese soil.”

As comfort women have been dying off — only 37 South Korean victims were still alive as of late last month — their cause has become both increasingly visible and increasingly vulnerable to being appropriated in the service of other, often nationalistic, agendas. The few remaining survivors are being cast in a heavily symbolic role they never asked to play — yet another blow to their long-running quest for recognition and the restoration of their dignity.

There are more than 20 statues like the pair in Hong Kong throughout East Asia and beyond, most modeled after one representing a Korean girl that was placed in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul in 2011. That original “Statue of Peace,” as its creators call it, has become a rallying point for weekly anti-Japanese protests, some of them belligerent, about islands contested by South Korea and Japan or calling for the boycott of Japanese goods.

The cause of South Korea’s comfort women has fallen hostage not only to nationalistic interest groups, but also to the country’s fractious domestic politics. In 2015, the administration of President Park Geun-hye and the Japanese government came to an agreement that was supposed to finally settle the two countries’ dispute over the issue. The Japanese government admitted wartime Japan’s involvement in procuring women for its soldiers, and agreed to set up a fund of one billion yen (about $9 million) to benefit the 46 South Korean comfort women alive at the time. A government official said that Mr. Abe expressed “anew sincere apologies and remorse from the bottom of his heart to all those who suffered immeasurable pain and incurable physical and psychological wounds.”

But Mr. Abe’s wording hewed close to an official declaration from 1993, which some comfort women had found lacking in sincerity. To some, Mr. Abe also later seemed to backtrack from his own statement when he told the Diet that the 2015 deal did not require Japan to issue letters of apology to South Korean comfort women. The deal itself, which was problematic from the start, became even more so.