weddings for the unwed

TOECHON, South Korea (AP) - A single picture captures the regret, shame and rage that Kim Gun-ja has harbored through most of her 89 years. Dressed in a long white wedding gown, she carries a bouquet of red flowers and stares at the camera, her deep wrinkles obscured by makeup and a diaphanous veil.
A local company arranged wedding-style photo shoots as gifts for Kim and other elderly women at the House of Sharing, a museum and nursing home for South Koreans forced into brothels by Japan during World War II. Kim and many of the other women never married, giving the pictures a measure of bitterness.
"That could have been my life: Meet a man, get married, have children, have grandchildren," Kim said in her small, tidy room at the nursing home south of Seoul. "But it never happened. It could never be."