S. Korea, Japan to hold talks on wartime sexual slavery

South Korea and Japan will hold the seventh round of director general-level talks in Seoul next week about Japan's wartime sexual slavery, Seoul's foreign ministry said Friday.

Lee Sang-deok, chief of the South Korean Foreign Ministry's Northeast Asian Affairs Bureau, will meet on Monday with Junichi Ihara, chief of the Japanese Foreign Ministry's Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau.

Such dialogue came in about two months after the sixth round of talks was held in Tokyo in January this year when Japan reportedly proposed detailed positions to resolve its sex enslavement of Korean women during World War II.

Japan's position reportedly has many differences with that of South Korea, which has claimed acknowledgment of wartime atrocities and damages for sex slaves from the Japanese cabinet led by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

Japan has insisted that the sexual slavery issue was resolved via the 1965 treaty, which normalized diplomatic ties between Seoul and Tokyo.

According to historians, at least 200,000 women from the Korean Peninsula, China, Indonesia and the Philippines were coerced to serve as sex slaves for Japanese forces during World War II.

South Korean President Park Geun-hye has refused, since her inauguration in February 2013, to sit down face-to-face with Abe, citing his wrong perception of history.

On Jan. 12, Park said in her third-year New Year's press conference that Japan should change its attitude toward history to make a summit with Abe possible, saying that time is running out for the victims due to their old age.

In South Korea, almost all the victims already passed away, with only 54 still alive. Endi