National Post

COMFORT WOMEN

Japan, South Korea reach agreement on wartime sex slaves.

- BY ANNA FIFIELD

TOKYO• Japan and South Korea said Monday they had “finally and irreversib­ly” resolved a dispute over wartime sex slaves that has bedevilled relations between the two countries for decades.

In a surprise developmen­t, the two countries’ foreign ministers met in Seoul to finalize a deal that will see Japan put US$8.3 million into a South Korean fund to support the 46 surviving so-called “comfort women” and to help them recover their “honour and dignity” and heal their “psychologi­cal wounds.”

The move will be welcomed in Washington, which has been both concerned and annoyed by the fighting between its two closest allies in Asia. This year marks seven decades since the end of the Second World War and the end of the Japanese occupation of the Korean Peninsula.

Independen­t historians have concluded that as many as 200,000 women and girls — from occupied countries such as Korea, China, the Philippine­s and other Southeast Asian Nations — were coerced by the Japanese Imperial Army to work as sex slaves during the war.

“We made a final and irreversib­le solution at this 70th- anniversar­y milestone,” Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told reporters in Tokyo after speaking to his South Korean counterpar­t, President Park Geun- hye, on the phone.

Earlier, in Seoul, his foreign minister had said Abe “expresses anew his most sincere apologies and remorse to all the women who underwent immeasurab­le and painful experience­s.”

“I feel we’ve fulfilled the responsibi­lity of the generation living now,” Abe said after his call with Park. “I’d like this to be a trigger for Japan and South Korea to co-operate and open a new era.”

Seoul promised this would be the end of the dispute — which has been officially “resolved” before — if Japan fulfils its side of the agreement. It comes less than two months after the two leaders held their first summit, and after the resolution of a high- profile court case, with a Japanese journalist this month acquitted of defaming Park.

Notably, both sides agreed to stop “accusing or criticizin­g each other regarding this i ssue in the i nternation­al community, including at the United Nations.” Some of this battle has played out in the United States, with South Koreans erecting memorials to comfort women and Japan trying to have references to “forcible recruitmen­t” removed from American college textbooks.

Some of the 46 “comfort women” still alive rejected the agreement because it did not resolve outstandin­g legal claims.

Lee Yong-su, an 88-year-old former comfort woman, said she would “ignore it all.”

“I don’ t t hink comfort women victims were even considered ( in this resolution),” she told reporters after the deal, saying Japan had still not taken legal responsibi­lity for the comfort women issue.

 ?? AFP / GETTY IMAGES ?? South Korean women who were forced to serve as sex slaves for Japanese troops during the Second World War watch a broadcast of a Japanese-Korean announceme­nt Monday.
AFP / GETTY IMAGES South Korean women who were forced to serve as sex slaves for Japanese troops during the Second World War watch a broadcast of a Japanese-Korean announceme­nt Monday.

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