Gil Won-ok

Gil Won-ok (, 30 November 1928 – 16 February 2025), also known as Grandma Gil, was a Korean activist who was forced into becoming a comfort woman during World War II. She dedicated her life to demanding redress and an official apology from Japan for the military sexual violence that affected over 200,000 women in the war.

Early life Gil Won-ok was born in 1928, probably on 30 November, in Huichon, Korea, Empire of Japan, and spent her early years in Pyongyang.

In 1940, at the age of thirteen, Gil boarded a train to a Japanese factory where she was promised work. Both women vowed to donate all the funds they received as compensation for the war crimes that were inflicted on them in order to help women who were put in similar situations to theirs. Some of the individuals who were recipients of the fund include victims of the Second Congo War along with rape victims from the Vietnam War whose violence was inflicted by Koreans.