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S. Korea, Japan agree to hold regular meetings on sex slavery issue

South Korea and Japan will hold monthly meetings on the historical issue of alleged Japanese use of South Korean women as sex slaves in World War II.

By Ed Adamczyk
Kim Soon-Duk, a Korean survivor of World War II sexual slavery in Japan and China, speaks at a rally sponsored by The National Organization for Women outside the U.S. State Department in Washington, July 23, 2001. The rally was held to seek justice for former "comfort women." (File/UPI/Jennifer Bowman)
Kim Soon-Duk, a Korean survivor of World War II sexual slavery in Japan and China, speaks at a rally sponsored by The National Organization for Women outside the U.S. State Department in Washington, July 23, 2001. The rally was held to seek justice for former "comfort women." (File/UPI/Jennifer Bowman) | License Photo

SEOUL, April 16 (UPI) -- South Korea and Japan agreed Wednesday to hold regular meetings on the Japanese army’s sexual enslavement of Korean women during World War II.

The meeting in Seoul between South Korea’s director general for northeast Asian affairs, Lee Sang-deok and his Japanese counterpart, Junichi Ihara, was the first official negotiation regarding the issue, a source of diplomatic tension.

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Up to 200,000 women were coerced into working at front-line brothels as “comfort women” for Japanese soldiers during the war, and the grievances of 55 known survivors have not yet been resolved. Both sides agreed to hold monthly meetings at the director general level.

The surviving women and the South Korean government seek an apology that a number of Japanese say was made in 1993, when then Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono accepted Japanese responsibility for the state-run brothels, extending his nation’s “sincere apologies and remorse.”

The apology is a source of contention that some in Japan want to see revised. A statement by Hiroshi Yamada of the opposition Japan Restoration Party noted, “Japan had state-run prostitution just like other countries in the world, around World War II.”

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The suggestion that so many women, mainly Korean, were actual prostitutes or sex slaves angers some Japanese.

[Yonhap] [CNN]

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