Recalled Japanese ambassador may return to S. Korea next week: sources

Japanese ambassador to South Korea, who were recalled to protest the placing of a new statue symbolizing Japan's wartime sex slavery victims near its consulate in South Korea's southern port city Busan, may return to South Korea next week, local media reported on Friday.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will discuss with Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida and make a decision on the date when its ambassador to South Korea Yasumasa Nagamine and its consul general to Busan Yasuhiro Morimoto will return to South Korea, said the sources.

Last week, Japan temporarily recalled its ambassador to Seoul and consul general to Busan, in protest against the installation of a girl's statue near the Japanese consulate in Busan, which represents Korean teenagers coerced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) during the devastating war and Japan's brutal occupation of the Korean Peninsula.

The Japanese government also decided to suspend high-level economic dialogue with South Korea and talks on currency swapping as part of its "initial" response to the installation of the statue.

The "unusually drastic" move by Japan, as it has been referred to by some media reports here, purportedly aims to pressure the shaky South Korean government into abiding by a controversial bilateral agreement reached in December 2015 between the administration of South Korea's Park Geun-hye and Japan over the "comfort women" issue.

As there have been no signs so far that the statue would be removed shortly from in front of the Japanese Consulate General in Busan at the request of Tokyo, and Seoul reflected strongly to Tokyo's counter measures, more and more people in Japanese government and ruling party think that the prolong the ambassador's withdrawal from Seoul would, on the contrary, not conducive to solve the thorny issue, said the sources.

South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung Se said Friday at a parliament session that it's a general position in the international society that it is undesirable to set up any facility or models in front of diplomatic missions or consular missions.

Yun Byung Se's remarks showed understanding to Japan's request, which also lead to Tokyo's plan to let its envoy return to South Korea, said Japanese media.

The expression "comfort women" is a euphemism used to describe Asian women who were forced into sexual enslavement and to serve the IJA and others in Japanese military brothels during Japan's invasion of its Asian neighbors before and during the WWII.

In line with the 2015 agreement, which aims to settle the "comfort women" issue once and for all, Japan remitted 1 billion yen (8.71 million U.S. dollars) last year to a South Korean fund helping former "comfort women."

However, the 2015 agreement has enraged many South Korean people, especially the surviving "comfort women", as it failed to state that Japan shall admit legal responsibility and sincerely apologize for the atrocities it committed before and during World War II.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, for his part, has never admitted the fact that Japan forcibly recruited women into sexual slavery during the war.

South Korea's opposition parties now have renewed their demand to rescind the 2015 agreement.

On Dec.28, 2016, which marked the first anniversary of the agreement, South Korean activists put up the statue of a girl, which is dressed in Korean traditional costume and is sitting in a chair, without approval from the municipal government. Endit