(Photo: Huanqiu)

Seoul (People's Daily) - A special exhibition by Korean painter Jingxin Li, in which she helped Japanese "comfort women" victims from World War II recover from their painful ordeal through her art, closed Wednesday in Seoul, South Korea.

A "comfort women" victim herself, Xueshun Jin first spoke out about her own suffering on August 14, 1991 and revealed the heinous crimes the Japanese committed during the war.

In 2018, the South Korean government officially designated August 14 as the National Day of Remembrance. To commemorate this historical move, Seoul municipal government and Korea Northeast Asian History Foundation held the exhibition entitled “Painting Stories of Japanese Comfort Women” from Oct. 22-31.

The exhibition featured more than 130 pencil paintings by Jingxin Li showing how she cured “comfort women” victims through her drawings at the "Share Home" in Gyeonggi-do, Korea from 1993 to 1997.

Jingxin Li said the victims had appeared just like magnolias about to blossom as teenage girls, but those flowers never got a chance to bloom because of the war; and she hoped that the aged victims would be remembered for their courage to forge a new life through her paintings.

(Compiled by Elaine Yue Lin)