Two baby boys she bore while in the Japanese brothel were taken away for
adoption -- she never saw them again.
As Japan nears the 60th anniversary of its World War Two defeat on August 15,
Song says all she wants is an apology.
"I cannot die because I am so angry with Japan for refusing to admit what it
did and apologise," she said.
Song spoke of beatings and starvation at a brothel in China called
"International Hall" in evidence to the Tokyo High Court in 2000.
Some of her fellow victims were driven to suicide, she said.
A district court had earlier accepted the facts of the case but dismissed her
demand for an apology and, later, compensation.
Japan contends that all issues of compensation were settled by peace treaties
after World War Two.
"My eardrum was ruptured and I lost all hearing in one of my ears. They gave me
a tattoo on my arm...I am ashamed of it," she said in court evidence
distributed by a support group.
Many historians estimate that about 200,000 women from various parts of Asia,
including Japan, were forced to work in Japanese military brothels before and
during World War Two.
The Japanese government acknowledged in 1993 that the Imperial Army, and not
private companies, was responsible for forcing women into sexual slavery.
Politicians have since apologised for the way the women were treated, but Song
filed a lawsuit in 1993 demanding an official apology in parliament, which was
finally rejected by the Supreme Court 10 years later.
Brought to Japan as the wife of a Japanese officer after the war, but abandoned
on arrival, Song stayed on and became the only former sex slave living in Japan
to speak openly of her experiences.
Her live-in partner, also Korean, died more than 20 years ago, leaving her
without relatives in Japan.
Song has refused to apply for compensation from the partly state-funded Asian
Women's Fund that was set up to help former "comfort women," saying she did not
see it as a sincere apology.
She ekes out a living on the equivalent of $533 a month in state benefits in
Miyagi prefecture, northern Japan, but says she is not interested in cash.
"However much money they offer, I don't want it," she said. "Money cannot heal
wounds. What I want is an apology."
Reuters
