U.N. panel recommends Japan to compensate comfort women victims

SEOUL, Nov. 19 (UPI) -- A U.N. panel said Japan should ensure that all victims of wartime military sexual slavery receive adequate compensation in a report Monday.

The Committee on Enforced Disappearances by a U.N. human rights body said that there has been a "lack of adequate reparations to the victims" of Japanese military sexual slavery, in its report, which reviews human rights issues related to Japan.

It called Japan to report accurate data on the number of the victims of military sexual slavery -- euphemistically called comfort women -- for an investigation to uncover the truth and to offer compensation to the victims.

The committee also urged Japan to investigate children born to the comfort women who were taken away forcibly.

It said Japan should "take necessary measures to search for and identify any children born to comfort women who may have been victims of wrongful removal, enforced disappearance."

The panel expressed regret to the Japanese government's position that the issue of compensation regarding victims of sexual slavery is "resolved finally and irreversibly."

According to victims' testimonies, an estimated number of more than 200,000 women from Korea, China, Taiwan, and the Philippines and other Asian countries, where Japan invaded during World War II, were forcibly taken to work at military brothels for Japanese soldiers.

In South Korea, there are 27 surviving victims of Japanese military sexual slavery. The comfort women and activists have been staging a protest to demand an apology from the Japanese government every Wednesday in Seoul for 28 years.

Japan has claimed that all issues related to its military invasion during World War II were settled in an economic cooperation agreement signed by the Japanese and South Korean government in 1965 and another agreement in 2015, which pledged support and financial compensation to the comfort women victims in South Korea.