A two-story concrete building sits fenced off beside Dongducheon’s Soyo Mountain entrance, partially obscured by barbed wire and overgrown vegetation. Peeling paint and collapsing ceilings reveal its age, and graffiti marks its walls.

To most visitors, the site is little more than a derelict structure, abandoned since 1996. However, for over two decades starting in 1973, this building served as a Venereal Disease (VD) Detention Center for comfort women.

While the term usually refers to women coerced into sex work for the Imperial Japanese Armed Forces, the comfort women who were housed at this VD Detention Center were women who