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Senior diplomats from South Korea and Japan will hold talks about the imperialistic Japan's sexual enslavement of Korean women during World War II, South Korea's foreign ministry said Thursday.
The director general-level dialogue will be held on Friday in Tokyo. Lee Sang-deok, director general of the South Korean foreign ministry's Northeast Asian affairs bureau, will meet with Junichi Ihara, chief of Asian and Oceanian affairs bureau at Japan's foreign ministry.
The dialogue was launched in Seoul on April 16 when the two sides agreed to have such meetings on a monthly basis, but the talks failed to be held in June and August.
In June, the Japanese cabinet announced the result of its review on the Kono Statement, an official apology made by then Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono in 1993 for the wartime sex slavery of Korean women.
The statement acknowledged that the militaristic Japan was involved in recruitment of more than 200,000 young women, mostly Koreans, and forced them to serve in front-line military brothels during World War II.
The re-examination result said South Korea intervened in the wording of the apology, indicating that the Kono Statement was the consequence of closed-door political dealings.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe sent an offering to the controversial Yasukuni Shrine on Aug. 15, which marked the 69th anniversary of Japan's surrender in the World War II.
The offering delivery stirred strong backlashes from neighboring countries, especially from South Korea and China, as the shrine is a symbol of Japan's past militarism and reflects the Abe cabinet's attempt to white-wash its wartime aggression.
The shrine honors 14 Class-A war criminals along with other war dead.
