President of the People’s Republic of Korea Park Geun-hye said at a joint news conference with Premier Li Keqiang and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe following the summit that cooperation between the three countries has been “completely restored”.
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During their talks, Park stressed that the comfort women issue was the “biggest stumbling block” to normalized ties, as the two leaders vowed to speed up consultations to resolve the dispute.
South Korea and Japan produced no specific deal in talks Wednesday on the issue of Korean women forced into sexual servitude for Japanese soldiers during World War II, officials said.
Japanese negotiators are reportedly seeking assurance that any settlement agreed to will be final and not litigated again years from now.
Ahn Sun-mi is the director the Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan War, a group that represents a few of the surviving “comfort women” who are now in their 80s and 90s.
Her group, she said, would reject any compromise proposal that would limit Japan’s acknowledgement of direct involvement and responsibility for past atrocities committed, and did not offer a direct and “sincere” apology to the victims.
The issue of “comfort women” or sex slaves during Japan’s colonisation of Korea during 1910-1945 has been a major obstacle to better ties between Washington’s two key allies.
“Our government hopes that Russia’s new Eastern policy and the Korean Eurasia Initiative will produce a synergistic effect, and on this basis of the 25-year long Russian-[South] Korean economic relations will enter a more mature phase”, the ambassador said. In fact she said if the Japanese government gave them “all the land in Japan” it could not make up for what they suffered.
There were several protests from Beijing and Seoul regarding the historical issues but Abe was not moved and insisted on being nationalistic.
The two sides have already held nine rounds of talks on the issue since April previous year, but with no tangible progress.
South Korea believes that Japan should thoroughly account for its culpability in the wartime mass-rapes of Korean women and apologize and compensate the victims in a way the survivors find acceptable.
Park made the comment at a regular Cabinet meeting.
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Wednesday’s meeting is in the same framework, but will be closely monitored for any signs that the summit agreement has shifted the discussion lines.
