Japan considers ‘comfort women’ statue removal a precondition for providing 1

The foreign ministry said two vice ministers would visit two comfort women shelters to explain the terms and win the victims’ support – a step which will be key to securing the approval of the nation.

The agreement has prompted the Presidential Office to demand that the treatment also be extended to Taiwanese affected by the issue – about 2,000 people, according to a Taipei Women’s Rescue Foundation estimate. Only four are alive and their average age is 90, Kyodo News reported.

Kent Boydston, a research analyst at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, said both sides made concessions to reach a deal.

But Japan reportedly stipulated that South Korea remove the statue in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul in exchange for 1 billion yen (US$8.3 million) in damages.

But South Korea paid a price for it. As a condition of the pact, the government in Seoul will never again criticize Japan over its sexual enslavement of South Korean women.

Japan’s mobilization of sex slaves into wartime service was a transnational effort that involved the forcible recruitment of young women from across Asia, including women of Dutch descent.

It wasn’t immediately clear if Mr Abe would be issuing a separate written statement or if it would be directly delivered to the surviving women, who are now in their 80s and 90s. The Japanese delegation conveyed Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s message of apology and remorse “from his heart” to the wartime sex slavery victims.

Japan has long maintained its disputes with Seoul were fully settled in a 1965 deal which saw Tokyo establish diplomatic ties and make a payment of $800 million.

The group refused calls to get rid of the statue and confirmed their policy of trying to create more comfort women statues in and outside South Korea in a rally Wednesday.

“Japan took us to be comfort women and still tries to deny its crime”, Lee said as protestors milled around the bronze statue of a barefoot teenage girl, which symbolizes women forced to work in Japanese brothels. However, the Korean women coerced into serving soldiers say the agreement falls short because Japan did not admit legal responsibility, the New York Times reports.

The plaintiffs reject the agreement sealed by Japan and South Korea earlier this week, saying that it does not amount to an admission of legal responsibility for sexual slavery.

Meanwhile, Japan’s Interchange Association on Wednesday said the deal with South Korea is meant to resolve the long-standing issue that has complicated bilateral ties for decades.