[25] She also states that the government wanted to minimize medical expenses on treating venereal diseases that the soldiers acquired from frequent and widespread rape, which hindered Japan's military capacity.

[49] A 2015 study examined archival data which was previously difficult to access, partly due to the China-Japan Joint Communiqué of 1972 in which the Chinese government agreed not to seek any restitution for wartime crimes and incidents.

[57] Women who were used for military "comfort stations" also came from Burma, Thailand, French Indochina, Malaya, Manchukuo, Taiwan (then a Japanese dependency), the Dutch East Indies, Portuguese Timor,[58] Papua New Guinea[59] (including some mixed race Japanese-Papuans[60]) and other Japanese-occupied territories.

[68][69] Ikuhiko Hata, a professor of Nihon University, estimated the number of women working in the licensed pleasure quarter was fewer than 20,000 and that they were 40% Japanese, 20% Koreans, 10% Chinese, with others making up the remaining 30%.

The Malay Mustapha Yaakub, who was Youth International Bureau secretary for the UMNO called for Malaaysians who were victimized by Japanese soldiers such as comfort women to go out in public and talk about what happened in 1993.

However, Najib Tun Razak, the head of UMNOF Youth and Defence Minister banned Mustapha Yaakub from talking about the Malay rape victims at the 1993 Austria United Nations Human Rights Conference.

Mustapha wanted to attend the May 1993 Austria, Vienna UN World Human Rights Conference and submit his report so that countries attacked by Japan could testify to the commission for the reparations and apologies.

Their hopes were dashed when the UMNO heads led by Najiz Razak forced Mustapha Yaakub to back down so Japan did not apologize or pay reparations to Malay rape vicitms.

[107] Sufficient food, water, proper housing, toilets, and washing facilities were not provided to the women, and the extent of medical care was restricted to treating sexually transmitted diseases, sterilization, and terminating pregnancies.

[112] One Korean woman, Kim Hak-sun, stated in a 1991 interview about how she was drafted into the "comfort women corps" in 1941: "When I was 17 years old, the Japanese soldiers came along in a truck, beat us [her and a friend], and then dragged us into the back.

[120] Korea is a Confucian country where premarital sex was widely disapproved of, and since the Korean teenagers taken into the "comfort women corps" were almost always virgins, it was felt that this was the best way to limit the spread of venereal diseases that would otherwise incapacitate soldiers and sailors.

[111][123] As a victim of the incident, in 1990, Jan Ruff-O'Herne testified to a U.S. House of Representatives committee: Many stories have been told about the horrors, brutalities, suffering and starvation of Dutch women in Japanese prison camps.

[129][130] Hank Nelson, emeritus professor at the Australian National University's Asia Pacific Research Division, has written about the brothels run by the Japanese military in Rabaul, in what is now Papua New Guinea during WWII.

[139] In Confucian cultures, traditionally an unmarried woman must value her chastity above her own life, and any women who loses her virginity before marriage for whatever reason is expected to commit suicide; by choosing to live, the survivors made themselves into outcasts.

[141] The issue has been discussed in Korean newspapers since the war's end, with the number of articles jumping in the 1960s, when negotiations towards the normalization of Japan-Korea relations were underway, and further spiking in the 1980s, after the discovery of living former comfort women.

This ignited protest from neighbouring countries such as China and also sparked interest in the subject among some Japanese, including a number of wartime veterans who began to speak more openly about their past actions.

[150] In August 2014, the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun retracted articles that were published based on or including information from Seiji Yoshida, who claimed that he was responsible for the forced abduction of comfort women.

[159] The review brought to light coordination between Japan and South Korea in the process of composing the Kono Statement and concluded that, at the request of Seoul, Tokyo stipulated coercion was involved in recruiting the women.

In 1992, documents which had been stored since 1958 when they were returned by United States troops and which indicated that the military had played a large role in operating what were euphemistically called "comfort stations" were found in the library of Japan's Self-Defense Agency.

[193] Concerning the deal between two countries,[193] literally, Seoul and Tokyo failed to reach a breakthrough on the comfort women issue during the 11th round of Foreign Ministry director-general level talks on December 15, 2015.

[202][203] On June 15, 2018, The 20th civil division of Seoul Central District Court dismissed the comfort women's suit seeking damages against the South Korean government for signing the 2015 agreement with Japan.

[207] On June 25, 2021, the Japanese government announced that Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga stands by statements made by past administrations apologizing for Japan's aggression in World War II and admitting the military had a role in coercing comfort women, "largely from the Korean Peninsula", to work in brothels.

[216] Moreover, 'patriotic' emerging faiths like "Kofuku no Kagaku" ('Science of Happiness') and certain Christian factions advocating for the merging of religion and state have initiated a concerted effort domestically and internationally to deny the existence of the comfort women system.

[217] In early 2001, in a controversy involving national public broadcaster NHK, what was supposed to be coverage of the Women's International War Crimes Tribunal on Japan's Military Sexual Slavery was heavily edited to reflect revisionist views.

[222] In 2012, the former mayor of Osaka and co-leader of the Japan Restoration Party,[223][224] Tōru Hashimoto initially maintained that "there is no evidence that people called comfort women were taken away by violence or threat by the [Japanese] military".

The articles were concerned with former imperial army officer Seiji Yoshida, who claimed he had forcibly taken Korean women to wartime Japanese military brothels from the Jeju Island region in South Korea.

The prosecution said Gil suffers from dementia and that Yoon had exploited her reduced physical and mental capacities and pressed her to donate a total of 79.2 million won ($67,102) to the Korean Council between November 2017 and January 2020.

Additionally, she was accused of fraud and embezzlement of almost half a million dollars from governmental organizations and private donors, which were used to buy properties and even pay tuition for her daughter's education at the University of California.

[292] Also, the director of the Center for Asian American Media, Dai Sil Kim-Gibson, made a comfort women video archive, a documentary film for K–12 through college level students.

Also two of them have published two autobiographic books: Comfort Woman: Slave of Destiny by Rosa Henson and The Hidden Battle of Leyte: The Picture Diary of a Girl Taken by the Japanese Military by Remedios Felias.