SYDNEY, Aug. 5 (Xinhua) -- A "comfort women" statue commemorating ladies who were used as sexual slaves during the Second World War will go on display in Australia for the first time on Saturday.
The local Korean community has decided to go with the unveiling of the statue despite the resistance it has received from the Japanese community in Sydney.
Sydney's Peace Statue Establishing committee spokesperson Sihyun Paik said the society had pooled a donation of about 50,000 Australian dollars (38,264 thousand U.S. dollars) to bring the statue from South Korea.
He said this was because the committee felt compelled to honor almost 200,000 Korean ladies who had been forced into prostitution to satisfy soldiers before and during WWII from the 1930s to 1945.
"The statue will be here on a permanent basis. It's our hope that it will make its way to the war memorial museum in Canberra one day as well. We haven't started talking to them (the museum) yet but we hope to get a spot there soon," Paik told Xinhua on Friday.
He said until then, the statue will be within the grounds of anywhere the Korean society deems it fit to be. At present, there are only 29 of the 1.5-meter statue worldwide. Besides South Korea, the statue can also be found at Glendale and Detroit in the United States and in Toronto, Canada.
The "comfort women" statue will be displayed at the Korea Society in Sydney's Croydon Park.
