SEOUL, Nov. 2 (UPI) — The leaders of Japan and South Korea ended a standoff on issues surrounding Tokyo’s wartime past and the recruitment of Korean “comfort women,” but Seoul did not receive a guarantee from either Japan or the United States regarding Japanese military limits on the Korean peninsula.
The breakthrough came after a meeting between South Korean President Park Geun-hye and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Monday that followed a more comprehensive trilateral summit with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, Yonhap reported.
Park and Abe agreed to break the impasse on the issue of “comfort women” forced to serve in Japanese military brothels during World War II, but both sides decided the issue couldn’t be resolved before 2016.
Analysts in South Korea and Japan lauded the agreement as a breakthrough. Lee Won-deog, head of the Japanese studies center at Seoul’s Kookmin University, said the meeting “removed the obstacle to future summits between the two countries.”
Haruki Wada, a leading historian of the Korean War at Tokyo University, told South Korean newspaper Segye Ilbo that “a solution would be reached soon,” now that the leaders of both countries have made public their commitment to ending the issue of comfort women.
After meeting with Park, Abe said he and Park exchanged frank opinions and requested South Korean answers to Tokyo’s grievances. South Korea press reported that during the summit Abe had mentioned a standing South Korea lawsuit against the Seoul bureau chief of Japanese newspaper Sankei Shimbun Tatsuya Kato, who was charged with publishing defamatory articles about Park.
While many agreed the summit had positive outcomes, Yonhap reported a cluster of South Korean civic groups protested the Abe visit, demanding an apology for human rights violations that occurred during the period of Japanese colonial rule from 1910-45. The groups also said the summit was not appropriate, given Japan’s position on South Korean sovereignty and Tokyo’s assertion its Self-Defense Forces could enter North Korea without Seoul’s permission.
Members of the Obama administration, however, are endorsing Japan’s position. During the Security Consultative Meeting between the defense chiefs of the United States and South Korea on Monday, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter told South Korea press both Japan and South Korea are very important allies and did not rule out a Japanese SDF entry into the Korean peninsula without Seoul’s permission.
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