Japan protests S. Korea's request for apology on "comfort women" despite flaws leading to prior deal

TOKYO, Jan. 10 (Xinhua) -- Japan lodged a protest with South Korea on Wednesday over President Moon Jae-in's remarks suggesting that Japan untie an "erroneous knot" over the "comfort women" issue by sincerely apologizing to the victims.

Kenji Kanasugi, director general of the Japanese Foreign Ministry's Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau, told a senior official from the South Korean Embassy in Tokyo that Moon's remarks are "unacceptable," Kyodo News here quoted a ministry source as saying Wednesday.

Kanasugi's protest followed Moon being quoted by local media as saying during a New Year's press conference that "Japan should accept the truth, apologize with a sincere heart and take the 'comfort women' issue as a lesson and work with the international community in such a way that something similar could not occur again."

South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha intimated a day earlier that Tokyo should do more to atone for its past wartime crimes involving "comfort women," although maintained that Seoul would not seek to renegotiate a bilateral deal on the issue made two years ago.

Moon said on Wednesday that while it is "undeniable" that the deal is an official bilateral agreement, the "erroneous knot" with Japan over the "comfort women" issue must be untied by Tokyo apologizing to the victims.

The so-called "comfort women" issue involved soldiers from the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II, forcibly coercing and even kidnapping girls and women, and forcing them to work as sex slaves, servicing Japanese soldiers at military brothels during the war.

Many of the women forced into sex slavery by the Japanese aggressors came from the Korean Peninsula, as well as from other parts of Asia, including China.

Euphemistically, these sex slaves have come to be known collectively as "comfort women." Enditem