China has been unveiling a series of Japanese documents since earlier this week, again showing that the Japanese Imperial Army forced Korean women to work in military-run brothels serving its soldiers during World War II.

The Chinese State Archives Administration released the documents, written by the Japanese military in the 1940s, ahead of a Sept. 3 military parade marking the end of the war that is expected to highlight what Beijing calls the "War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression."

It also comes as last week's speech by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe stopped short of directly mentioning the Japanese military's sexual enslavement of women during the war.

According to the documents, the Japanese military forced dozens of Korean women to work as sex slaves when it set up military brothels in northeastern Chinese regions, including Mudanjiang, in October 1941.

The women were among about 2,000 Korean women who were forcibly recruited by the Japanese military in the 1940s, the state-run China News Service reported, citing the documents.

Historians estimate that more than 200,000 women, mostly Koreans, were coerced into sexual servitude at front-line Japanese brothels during the war. From 1910 to 1945, the Korean Peninsula was a Japanese colony.

Those sex slaves were euphemistically called "comfort women" by the Japanese military.

Japan has long attempted to water down the atrocity.

Abe's Cabinet, for example, angered South Korea last year with its attempt to "review" a 1993 statement of apology, known as the Kono Statement. Though Japan later said it still stands by the apology, the move was seen as an attempt to undermine the apology's credibility. (Yonhap)