Abe, Park agree to implement ‘comfort women’ deal
Abe and Park met one-on-one in Washington on the fringes of the Nuclear Security Summit, following their high-profile meeting in November, the first since the Japanese and South Korean leaders took office in 2012 and 2013, respectively.
Abe was quoted by a Japanese official as telling Park that he is willing to follow up on the deal to help the women, euphemistically called “comfort women,” though some problems remain surrounding the matter in both countries.
Park said South Korea intends to implement the deal in a sincere manner, according to Koichi Hagiuda, Japanese deputy chief Cabinet secretary.
Hagiuda said Abe and Park agreed to increase opportunities to meet bilaterally to improve ties, which had been seriously strained due to disputes over issues such as the interpretation of wartime history and the issue of comfort women.
The two governments reached a landmark agreement in December to settle the long-standing bilateral issue of the Korean comfort women “finally and irreversibly.”
The terms of the agreement includes an apology and a financial pledge of one billion yen (US$69 million) by Japan to help improve the lives of ageing former comfort women.
The Korean Peninsula was under Japanese colonial rule from 1910 to 1945.
Abe and Park also agreed to cooperate in settling the issues of the abduction of a number of Japanese and South Korean nationals by North Korea and families who were separated between the South and North in the confusion before and during the Korean war, according to Hagiuda.
Disputes over the interpretation of the comfort women issue have strained Tokyo-Seoul ties along with a row over Japan’s claims to a South Korea-controlled pair of islets in the Sea of Japan.
Senior officials from the two countries have been working on carrying out the comfort women deal but some in South Korea, including a number of the women and their supporters, are opposed to it.
