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Senior diplomats of South Korea and Japan met in Seoul on Sunday to discuss Japan's wartime sex slavery of Korean women, a long-running issue which has prevented the bilateral ties from improving.
The 12th round of director general-level meeting was held behind closed doors in Seoul to pre-arrange the issue on comfort women, or Korean women forced to serve in Japan's military brothels during World War II.
Based on the pre-arrangement, South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se and his Japanese counterpart Fumio Kishida will seek on Monday to reach a final agreement on the issue, which was first made public in 1991 after a South Korean victim's public testimony on the atrocities and her identification of herself as a former sex slave.
South Korean historians estimate that around 200,000 women, mostly from the Korean peninsula, were forced into the sex enslavement. Among 238 South Koreans who identified themselves as former sex slaves, only 46 are alive.
The scheduled meeting between the top diplomats, however, failed to create expectations that the two sides were in a home stretch to finalize their comfort women consultations amid the bitter give-and-take of "media plays."
Kishida's visit to Seoul was first known to the public via Japan's news outlets on Thursday, a day before the official announcement.
Multiple Japanese media reported that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe instructed Kishida to visit Seoul by the end of this year marking the 50th anniversary of normalized diplomatic ties between the two countries.
Some of South Korean media interpreted it as Japan's hidden intentions of hyping Abe's willingness to resolve the issue by highlighting "Abe's instruction." Others estimated that the Abe cabinet might have "intentionally" revealed the scheduled meeting to multiple Japanese media.
Japan's proposals to settle the issue, including a new government-backed fund to help South Korean victims with conciliatory money and Abe's letters to be sent to the victims to make an apology and acknowledge responsibility, were also reported through multiple Japanese news organizations.
In return for the proposals, South Korea could reportedly face Japan's demand for a permanent conclusion on the matter written on papers and the move of a "girl statue" symbolizing the sex slavery victims, which was erected in 2011 in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul.
A local association advocating the South Korean comfort women victims issued a statement on Saturday that Japan's demand for the move of the statue as a precondition is unacceptable.
It called on Japan to officially apologize for, properly compensate for and acknowledge its legal responsibility for the forced recruitment, while demanding the education on the wartime atrocities through history textbooks.
In protest against Japan's "media plays," South Korea's foreign ministry spokesman Cho June-Hyuck told reporters on Saturday that "absurd" media reports continued to have come out from the Japanese side despite the current situations that nothing was decided yet and the foreign ministers' meeting had yet to be held.
Cho expressed strong doubts about what hidden intention Japan had and whether Japan was seeking to take part in the upcoming talks in a sincere attitude.
South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se added to the counterattack, telling reporters on Sunday that there had been no change in Seoul's position on the 1965 treaty that normalized diplomatic ties with Japan.
Japan has claimed that the treaty cleared it of its legal responsibility for the wartime sex slavery, which is denied by South Korea. Seoul received 800 million U.S. dollars of grants and loans from Tokyo through the treaty in 1965.
South Korean President Park Geun-hye and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe agreed during their first bilateral summit meeting in Seoul on Nov. 2 to speed up consultations on the comfort women issue to reach an agreement by the end of this year.
Since then, two rounds of meeting between directors general had been held, but with no breakthrough.
