Students Bike Across America in honor of Comfort Women

 
Two students from South Korea are biking from Los Angeles to New York to bring awareness to the story of comfort women-mostly Korean women held as sexual slaves by members of the Japanese military during World War II.
 
Jo Yong Jo and Ha Joo Young began their journey June 23 and recently biked through Pittsburgh, reported the Pittsburgh City Paper .
 
“We want to raise this issue in the U.S. because the U.S. is the center of the media world,” said Young. “We don’t want to see this tragedy in any other [country].”
 
The bikers have gained support as they increasingly log more miles.
 
“Comfort women is a crime against humanity,” Hyeseon Kim, a Happy Valley resident and Korean culture and language instructor at Penn State Altoona, said to the Daily Collegian.
 
Kim said she admired their perseverance surviving “scorching deserts, high Rocky Mountains, muggy Midwest flats and up the hills of Pennsylvania.”
 
The two bikers say their journey is not about bashing Japan.
 
“I want to emphasize that it’s not,” Jo said. “It’s a world human rights issue, a sex trafficking issue and a women’s issue.”
 
AsAmNews has Asian America in its heart.  We’re an all-volunteer effort of dedicated staff and interns. You can show your support by liking our Facebook page at  www.facebook.com/asamnews, following us on Twitter, sharing our stories, interning or joining our staff.