This year, which marks the 80th anniversary of the victory in the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War, has brought renewed attention to the 13th International Comfort Women Memorial Day.

Observed annually on August 14, the day was jointly established by civil groups in South Korea, China, Japan, and other countries in 2012 to commemorate the victims of the Japanese military's wartime sexual slavery system during World War II. 

The so-called "comfort women" were young girls and women forcibly taken to provide sexual services to soldiers of the Imperial Japanese Army.

With time passing and survivors steadily diminishing, the importance of preserving this history grows. In February, the death of Gil Won-ok left just six surviving victims in South Korea, according to local news agency Hankyoreh. In May, a 96-year-old survivor passed away in central China's Hunan Province, leaving only seven registered survivors on the Chinese mainland. 

On Wednesday, one day before the memorial day, South Korean residents gathered in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul – as they have done for years – demanding a formal apology and proper compensation from the Japanese government.

"Even with the rain coming down like this, seeing all of you here brings me to tears. Thank you, thank you, thank you," said Lee Yong-soo, 96, a victim of Japanese wartime sexual slavery.

Activists say the urgency to resolve the issue is greater than ever. "If we don't speak out and make ourselves heard, people won't listen – they hardly do even now. So rather than let this be forgotten, we keep taking action. When we do, people gather like this in great numbers," Choi Ye-ji, a female protester told CGTN in Seoul.

Shin Hei-soo, chair of Board of Directors of Korea Center for United Nations Human Rights Policy, stressed the need to pass down the history.

"If we have will to preserve and teach the next generation, it will survive," said Shin.

Shin called on civic organizations to continue educating students and ordinary people through activities, demonstrations and the documents that are kept at museums in the country.

An estimated 400,000 women from more than a dozen Asian countries were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military, about half of them Chinese, according to the Research Center for Comfort Women at Shanghai Normal University.

Since the first public testimony by a former comfort woman in 1991, the message has remained unchanged: the past may be fading, but the fight for justice is far from over.

(Cover: Flowers are placed in front of the busts of the deceased elderly women, who used to be comfort women, in South Korea, August 13, 2025. /VCG )