Former sex slave demands Japan apology in WW2 row

TOKYO, Mar 2 (Reuters) A Korean women who was abducted and kept as a sex slave by Japanese soldiers during World War Two urged Japan's government today to apologise amid an escalating international row over the fate of the so-called ''comfort women''.

Lee Yong-soo, who was kidnapped by Japanese troops at age 16, testified in Washington last month in support of a US House of Representatives resolution asking Japan to apologise to ''comfort women'' -- a Japanese euphemism for wartime sex slaves.

''Why did Japan have to take little girls, some only 14 or 15 years old, to give these horrific services?'' 78-year-old Lee told a news conference, wiping away tears as she recalled her ordeal.

The proposed resolution sparked a war of words this week, with South Korea criticising Japan's handling of its wartime past, and some Japanese politicians denying that the army had ever forced women into prostitution.

Japan has publicly apologised to the 200,000 or so former sex slaves, but Lee said she demanded a personal letter of apology and compensation from the Japanese government.

A friend accompanied by a soldier lured Lee out of her parents' house in Taegu, Korea, one night in 1944. She was beaten, threatened, dragged to the station and pushed onto a train, and after a long journey reached the Chinese port of Dalian, where she was transferred to a Japanese Imperial Army ship to Taiwan.

''There were 300 sailors and only five of us girls,'' she said, her voice breaking up.

The girls were repeatedly raped on the ship, and when they arrived they were taken to a ''comfort station'' or army brothel in the Taiwanese town of Sinchu.

Japanese right-wing groups and several politicians in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party have questioned the testimonies of former ''comfort women'' in Korea, China and Southeast Asia.

Some LDP lawmakers want to water down parts of an apology issued in 1993 -- dubbed the Kono statement after the chief cabinet secretary at the time, Yohei Kono -- because it ''damaged Japan's image'', a newspaper reported today.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has stood by the apology, disappointing some of his conservative supporters, but yesterday he questioned the degree of the military's involvement.

''There is no evidence to back up that there was coercion as defined initially,'' he told reporters, apparently referring to charges that the Imperial Army had kidnapped women and put them in brothels.

Japan set up the Asian Women's Fund in the 1990s to compensate former sex slaves, and 285 of the women who accepted payments of about 20,000 dollars each from that fund received personal apologies from the prime minister.

But others such as Lee have refused to accept money from the fund because it is mainly privately financed, and they want the government to take responsibility.

The fate of the ''comfort women'' is one of many wartime issues that have for decades strained relations between Japan and its neighbours, in particular Korea and China, but the US involvement has dragged the debate onto the front pages again.

US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte told a news conference today that it was his understanding that Japanese prime ministers had apologised twice for what happened.

''I think our view is that what happened during the war was most deplorable, but that as far as some kind of resolution of this issue, that this is something that must be dealt with between Japan and the countries that were affected.'' He said it was essential that such historical problems not interfere with tackling crucial diplomatic issues.

REUTERS SP KN1713