Senior officials of Korea and Japan are scheduled to hold their first bilateral meeting Tuesday to discuss follow-up steps since December’s agreement on resolving the “comfort women” issue, Seoul’s Foreign Ministry said Monday.
Chung Byung-won, the new director general for Northeast Asian affairs at the Foreign Ministry here, will travel to Tokyo for talks with Kimihiro Ishikane, director general for Asian and Oceanian affairs at Japan’s Foreign Ministry.
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| Protesters stage a sit-in demonstration next to the statue representing “comfort women” on March 18 in opposition to the Korea-Japan deal on resolving the sex slavery issue. Yonhap |
“The two sides plan to consult extensively on issues of mutual interest including measures to implement the Dec. 28 settlement,” the ministry said in a statement.
Under the deal, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe offered an apology and promised to provide 1 billion yen ($8.8 million) from state coffers with which a foundation will be set up here for the victims, conceding the government’s responsibility for its military’s sexual enslavement of Korean women during World War II.
Despite a brief letup following the compromise, tension has recently been rekindled especially after Tokyo approved a batch of updated high school textbooks carrying stronger claims to Korea’s easternmost islets of Dokdo last week.
By Shin Hyon-hee (heeshin@heraldcorp.com)
