Japan and South Korea resume talks in hope of resolving issue of sexual slavery during second world war
Their closely watched meeting came a day after they joined a three-way summit with China's premier and agreed to improve ties strained over historical and territorial disputes.
The leaders of South Korea and Japan resumed formal talks yesterday after a three-and-a-half-year freeze and agreed to try to resolve the decades-old issue of Korean women forced into Japanese military-run brothels during the second world war.
The agreement is a step forward but not a breakthrough. Ties between the two countries have sagged to one of their lowest ebbs since the late 2012 inauguration of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who takes a more hawkish, nationalistic stance than many of his predecessors. Seoul believes that Abe seeks to obscure Japan's brutal colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula in 1910-45.
The biggest source of friction is over Japanese responsibility for wartime sex slaves, who were euphemistically called "comfort women". Historians say tens of thousands of women from around Asia, many of them Korean, were sent to front-line military brothels to provide sex to Japanese soldiers.
Read more: ‘Comfort women’ issue is central to landmark summit with Japan, says South Korea’s Park
Japan has apologised before, but many South Koreans see the statements and past efforts at private compensation as insufficient. Abe hoped to weaken a 1993 apology but later promised not to do so despite protests in South Korea and elsewhere.
Abe and South Korean President Park Geun-hye yesterday agreed to try harder to settle the issue through dialogue, according to Park's office.
"President Park noted the issue of 'comfort women' is the biggest obstacle in efforts to improve bilateral ties. She stressed that the issue must be quickly settled in a way that our people can accept," said Park's senior adviser for foreign affairs and national security, Kim Kyou-hyun.
Abe confirmed the agreement between the nations.