A Statue of Peace is nestled in a residential area of Berlin's Mitte district in Germany, in this picture taken on Nov. 24, 2024. Korea Times photo by Kang Hyun-kyung

BERLIN — A bronze statue of a teenage girl in traditional Korean hanbok attire caught my attention as I was on a bus heading to my hotel in the central Berlin district of Mitte on Nov. 24, 2024.

After reaching my hotel, I headed back to the street to find the location of the statue and confirm whether it was the same as the Statue of Peace I had seen in South Korea. Sure enough, it was. This was a Statue of Peace, also known as the Statue of the Girl, symbolizing the approximately 200,000 Korean women euphemistically known as "comfort women." These women were forced into sex slavery by the Japanese military during World War II.

The statue was located in Fair Park, a small urban space nestled in a residential area of Mitte. Beside it was a chair in the same bronze color, but there was no information provided about the meaning of the statue or chair, nor any indication of the artist behind it.

As a Korean, I am deeply familiar with the tragic history of comfort women and the immense suffering they endured, both during the war and in its aftermath. As a journalist, I have interviewed survivors of wartime sex slavery and listened to their harrowing stories. Their words still haunt me. In South Korea, a group of activists spearheaded the memorial project to honor the victims and raise awareness of sex trafficking and wartime sexual violence. Collaborating with artists, they installed the original Statue of Peace near the Japanese Embassy in Seoul. However, this installation quickly became a diplomatic issue, as the Japanese government protested and demanded its removal.

I knew that........

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