ID :
392262
Mon, 12/28/2015 - 00:37
Auther :

Japan, S. Korea Working to Reach Deal on Comfort Women

Tokyo, Dec. 27 (Jiji Press)--Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida will visit Seoul on Monday for talks with his South Korean counterpart, Yun Byung-se, in a bid to hammer out an agreement to resolve the issue of Korean women recruited as wartime prostitutes for Japanese troops. Kishida is expected to propose the establishment of a new fund to provide humanitarian assistance to the women, who were forced to work in brothels for Japanese troops before and during World War II, and personal letters of apology from Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to the victims, euphemistically referred to as comfort women in Japan, in order to bring a final settlement to the intractable issue, informed sources said. To prevent the longstanding issue from being rekindled, Japan is seeking to put a bilateral agreement in writing, according to the sources. In preparation for the foreign ministerial talks, Japan and South Korea held a meeting of their senior foreign ministry officials on Sunday. The meeting brought together Kimihiro Ishikane, director-general of the Japanese Foreign Ministry's Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau, and Lee Sang-deok, director-general of the South Korean Foreign Ministry's Northeast Asian Affairs Bureau. Emerging from the meeting, which lasted for about two hours, Ishikane and Lee both declined to answer reporters' questions about the content of their talks. Aiming to prevent the issue of comfort women from becoming politicized again, Japan has proposed including wording such as "comprehensive and final settlement" in a bilateral agreement, according to the sources. There is also a proposal calling for joint financing of the proposed fund by the two governments in order to clarify South Korea's involvement in the initiative. Japan hopes to set the size of the fund at slightly more than 100 million yen, equivalent to 10 years' worth of the government's existing medical and welfare assistance program for surviving comfort women, which required 149 million yen in spending under the fiscal 2015 budget. After a South Korean request for greater assistance, the two governments are continuing discussions, the sources said. The two sides are also thrashing out the details of the letter of apology from Abe to former comfort women and Japan's demand that a statue of a girl symbolizing the women be removed from outside the Japanese embassy in Seoul. On Saturday, the Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan issued a statement criticizing the Japanese demand on the statue, saying it shows the lack of a determination on the Japanese side to resolve the comfort women issue. Japan plans to stand by its position that the legal aspect of the issue was resolved by the 1965 Japan-South Korea agreement on Japanese compensation for its 1910-1945 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula, which was concluded along with a treaty to normalize diplomatic relations between the two countries. In line with the stance, Japan hopes to characterize the apology from Abe as an expression of the prime minister's personal feelings, the sources said. As there are strong calls among the South Korean public for a Japanese recognition of its legal responsibility for the comfort women issue, it is still uncertain whether the two countries can find common ground at the foreign ministerial meeting on Monday. For years, the comfort women issue has been a major sticking point in relations between Japan and South Korea. At their first one-on-one summit, held in Seoul on Nov. 2, Abe and South Korean President Park Geun-hye agreed to speed up negotiations to bring a quick solution to the problem. END

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