12 FORMER SEX SLAVES WHO WERE FORCED TO SLEEP WITH OVER 50 MEN PER DAY SUE JAPAN FOR £16MILLION.

 The day Lee Ok-seon was snatched off the street is etched into her memory forever.

Terrified, she was just 15 years old when she was grabbed as she walked home from work and taken to work in a military brothel.

For three years she was held as a sex slave for the Japanese army where she was expected to 'comfort' up to 50 troops per day. 

Lee is one of only a few dozen surviving 'comfort women', the name given to up to 200,000 women and girls, mostly from the Korean peninsula, who were forced to work in Japanese frontline brothels between 1932 and 1945. 

JAPAN'S PM INSIST THE GOVERNMENT HAD NO HAND IN THE ABUSE

Now 87 and frail, Lee is locked in a £16million legal battle with the Japanese government as she seeks compensation for the sexual abuse she experienced as a comfort girl at the hands of the Japanese Imperial Army during the Second World War.

Together with 11 other surviving comfort girls who are seeking £1.3million each in a Californian court, Lee wants an acknowledgement of her suffering at the hands of the Japanese troops who sexually abused her.

She also wants an apology from Japanese government for her trauma.

Reliving the day she was taken, Lee said: 'They grabbed my arms so I couldn't move and the next day they forcibly fastened me into a car.'

SEX SLAVES

She was taken to Yanjin, a city located in Japanese-occupied China near the border with North Korea.

There, Lee said she was held with five other women and girls, who were subjected to daily rapes and abuse.

'I was taken away at 15, but even 14-year-olds were told to receive 40 or 50 soldiers every day,' Lee said, her back hunched and eyes fixed on the distance.

'It was so painful and difficult to live that many people committed suicide by drowning or going to the mountains to hang themselves.'

Lee's tragic tale began when she was seven and her parents told her that they didn't have enough money to pay for her education.

In an apparent act of kindness a woman who knew the family offered to foster Lee and pay for her schooling, which Lee's parents agreed to.

But, instead, Lee was forced to work at the woman's restaurant.

Later, she was sold off to work in a pub and it was there that she fell victim to the kidnappers.

As well as the sexual abuse, Lee describes frequent beatings she received at her 'comfort station,' a euphemism for sex chamber - one of many found in Asia at the height of the Japanese empire.

Lee recalled that the higher the rank of soldier, the crueller they were. 

'They said I was impudent and that they would kill me. They hit and kicked me, and just beat me,' she said. 'They would brandish a knife and say they'd kill me.' 

Lee, who now lives about an hour from Seoul in a special centre for sex slave survivors called the House of Sharing, said the conditions of her captivity had a devastating and permanent impact on her health. As well as damage to her senses, she was left unable to bear children. 

Repeated injections of the syphilis treatment compound 606 left many of the women unable to have children.

'I lost my sight, my hearing and my teeth through the beatings,' she said

On one occasion, Lee escaped, only to be quickly recaptured.

She says she still bears the scars of a knife attack by a military policeman enraged over her attempt to flee.

'The military police had the power to kill me or let me live. They hit me and threatened me for trying to escape. They asked why I tried to leave,' said Lee.

'I said I was hungry, and cold and exhausted because I didn't have proper clothes, so I tried to escape.'

'They slashed my arm. So I have this scar from that time,' she said, revealing an old gash on her left arm.

Lee is one of a handful of survivors of the Japanese Empire's system of forced prostitution of Korean and other mostly Asian women.

While estimates vary, as many as 200,000 women are believed to have been coerced into sexual slavery for the Japanese military from the 1930s until its defeat by the U.S. in 1945. 

For the past two decades, Japan has officially recognised its role in coercing the women into sexual slavery. 

In 1993 then chief cabinet secretary, Yohei Kono, offered the women an apology.

But, last year the conservative administration of Shinzo Abe said it would re-examine the apology.

The Japan premier suggested the government had no involvement in rounding up women and forcing them into sexual slavery.

Tokyo also claims that compensation was paid to the women in a 1965 as part of a Japanese treaty with South Korea.

Japan paid compensation to South Korea in recognition of its colonial atrocities, but Seoul used most of the money for infrastructure projects rather than compensation for survivors. 

The issue continues to be a major diplomatic obstacle between the two countries.

Yoo Hee-nam, another comfort woman who lives at the House of Sharing, has criticised Japan's attitude towards former sex slaves. 

She said: 'Abe won't recognize that we were drafted into sexual slavery. He says we were paid money and participated voluntarily.'

Yoo, 88, who is blind and has lung cancer, added: 'We are angry because our words are being treated like lies and because they say they didn't do anything. The Japanese people also say they did it. So we are taking up an international lawsuit.'

To this day, Yoo finds it difficult to go into details about her experiences.

'It was agonizing,' she said. 'They'd beat us severely. It was so pitiful. The Korean women weren't treated like human beings. We were treated like dogs and not fed properly.'

Like most of the victims, Yoo said she hid her past for years out of crippling shame. Even today, and among family, stigma remains.

'After I spoke about it, my children said they were ashamed,' she said. 'So now I just want to die quickly.'

Time is running out for the World War II comfort girls to get justice. There are just 49 survivors left, and their average age is close to 90. Their time for a resolution is rapidly running out.