The leaders of South Korea and Japan have held their first formal bilateral talks since taking office. The diplomatic meetings have reportedly arrived at a consensus to solve the issue of comfort women. But the topic of “comfort women”, forced to work in Japanese wartime military brothels, has always been an emotional one between Japan and South Korea.
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Past year the two allies agreed to postpone it indefinitely, saying it would happen on a “conditions based” timetable that includes completing improvements and upgrades to certain key elements of South Korean defenses.
The meeting was a diplomatic plus for Abe, who had sought two-way talks with Park amid a push by the United States for Japan and South Korea to improve relations in the face of an increasingly assertive China and an unpredictable North Korea. That is disputed by mostly Korean “comfort women”.
After their meeting, Prime Minister Abe said the two leaders promised to increase efforts to peacefully resolve this issue. South Korea, as well as China, says that Japan has failed to properly atone for WWII aggression that saw the sexual slavery of hundreds of thousands of women from their countries and other Asian nations.
The high-level contacts among the three neighboring countries broke down when Shinzo Abe became the prime minister of Japan in 2012. Another agreement concerned joint efforts to ensure the success of next month’s United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP21) in Paris and launch a new climate response system. And neither side publicly expressed willingness to compromise on the issue.
Hosaka Yuji is a political science professor at Seoul’s Sejong University. Many South Koreans believed that PM Abe was attempting to whitewash the heinous actions the Japanese inflicted on Koreans and Chinese civilians during the Japanese colonization of the two countries in early 20thcentury.
After meeting with Park, Abe said he and Park exchanged frank opinions and requested South Korean answers to Tokyo’s grievances. He suggested the two counties cooperate about free navigation.
U.S.-China frictions include the U.S.’s attempt to block another China project, the Asian Infrastructure and Investment Bank, and their recent dispute over China’s activities in the South China Sea.
Park and Li also witnessed the signing of deals on exporting South Korean manufacturing robots, rice and samgyetang – a ginseng chicken soup – to China, its largest trade partner, the report said.
China claims most of the energy-rich South China Sea.
While it was never likely to mend all the many broken fences between the two neighbors, the summit was seen as an important step towards a more pragmatic partnership less encumbered by decades of rancor and bitterness.
Park and Abe held their first-ever one-on-one summit in more than three years in South Korea on the sidelines of a trilateral leadership meeting with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang.
The three leaders agreed to work together on trade and security issues. “In this way, an environment for fair trade competition should be established”.
It also afforded Park an opportunity to be seen addressing issues of regional interest that included tackling North Korea’s arms programme.
The USA and South Korean defence chiefs met in Seoul on Monday in an annual review of their bilateral ties, and to discuss operational command of their joint forces in case tensions with North Korea escalate into a war.
US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter travelled to the border between North and South Korea during the summit.
Brian Padded reported this story from Seoul with contributions from Youmi Kim.
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Japan has so far refused to comply with the demand, insisting that the comfort women were recruited by civilian profiteers and its wartime military-led government was not directly involved.
