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S.Korea, Japan moving toward agreement on wartime sex slavery issue

Xinhua, November 11, 2015 Adjust font size:

South Korea and Japan are moving "inch by inch" toward an agreement to the issue on Japan's sex slavery of Korean women during World War II, Yonhap news agency reported Wednesday citing a South Korean government official.

The comments came after senior diplomats from the two countries held a meeting in Seoul to discuss the issue on comfort women, an euphemism for Korean women forced to serve in Japan's military brothels during the World War II.

"It's hard to say in detail, but (South Korea and Japan) are moving inch by inch toward a target," the South Korean official was quoted as saying, noting that the two sides held in-depth, useful consultations to rapidly resolve the comfort women issue as agreed upon during the Seoul-Tokyo summit.

The official said South Korea and Japan will continue consultations to seek an agreeing point amid the differences remaining over the issue, adding that the next round of meeting will be held at an earliest possible date.

The 10th round of South Korea-Japan director-general meeting on the comfort women was held earlier in the day, after South Korean President Park Geun-hye and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe agreed to speed up talks on the comfort women issue.

Park and Abe met in Seoul on Nov. 2 on the sidelines of the trilateral leadership meeting with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang that was held in Seoul the previous day for the first time in more than three years.

It was the first-ever one-on-one summit between Park and Abe as Park had refused to sit down with Abe amid historical disputes especially over Japan's sex slavery of Korean women.

President Park reiterated her call during a cabinet meeting Tuesday to rapidly resolve the comfort women issue as agreed upon during her first-ever one-on-one summit with Abe.

South Korea has called for Abe to make a "sincere" apology and properly compensate for Korean comfort women, but Japan has claimed that the issue was resolved in a 1965 treaty that normalized diplomatic ties between Seoul and Tokyo. Enditem