a minor, both scandals caused their film Forgive Me Once Again Despite Hatred (also known as Love Me Once Again 2002 or Again) to flop at the box office. Comfort women photographs On February 12, 2004 Lee, and companies Lototo Inc. and Netian Entertainment held a press conference to announce their plan to sell erotic photographs and videos of Lee posing as a comfort woman over the Internet, starting in March. "Comfort women" is the Japanese term for women who were forced to serve as their armies' sex slaves during World War II. The first part of the project was shot on Palau Island in the Pacific, where real comfort women were taken, with the next phases planned in Nepal and Japan. They declared they did this to return the issue to the spotlight and that part of the profits would go to surviving comfort women. A few photographs were released, showing a semi-nude Lee bathing in the sea, sleeping on the floor, and wearing somewhat revealing white clothes, with dirt on her face. This caused a great outcry from the surviving comfort women and the Korean Council for Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan. A press conference to announce the project's cancellation was held on February 16. Following the cancellation, Lee tearfully made a personal apology on her knees at the House of Sharing, a residence for some of the survivors. The women rejected her apology until the materials were destroyed, something the producer was hesitant to do. The producer further proposed a preview screening to obtain public approval for the project—they had 1 hour and a half of video and about 1,500-2,000 photos. Finally on February 19, he shaved his head (in a traditional gesture of apology) and publicly burned the materials in front of some of the surviving comfort women. Disregarding feminist criticisms of her casting, Kim Ki-duk directed Lee in the 2004 film 3-Iron. A love story between a battered woman and a younger man who lives in empty houses, Lee and costar Jae Hee's acting were praised, and Kim won Best Director at the 61st Venice International Film Festival. Despite the acclaim for 3-Iron, the comfort women controversy had a lasting negative effect on Lee's career, and it would take two more years before she made her acting comeback in Kim Soo-hyun's Love and Ambition in 2006. Drug use In 2013, she became