A statue honoring Korean women who were forced to work in Japanese military brothels during World War II will be displayed at the Capitol Building in Washington next month, according to a New York-based Korean-American group.

“The upcoming exhibition of the statue will be a historic moment, just as the moment back in 2007 when the US House of Representatives approved a resolution urging Japan to apologize (to the survivors),” Kim Min-sun,  head of the Korean American Association of Greater New York, was quoted as saying.

According to historians, 20,000 to 200,000 women from across Asia, many of them Koreans, were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military during World War II. The first statue of a teenage girl, created to honor the victims, was erected in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul in 2011.

Sculptors Kim Seo-kyung and Kim Eun-sung, who have made more than 30 statues erected in cities around the world, including the one in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul, will also create the new statue for the US Capitol.

The Korean American Association of Greater New York plans to hold a press conference on the upcoming exhibition on May 14.

By Claire Lee (dyc@heraldcorp.com)