If true, this demand to remove the comfort woman statue in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul causes me to wonder how sincere Prime Minister Abe is about settling the matter with the ROK. It would be political suicide for anyone in the ROK government to move the statue without first the Korean public feeling the issue has been settled, not before:
President Park Geun-hye (right, back row) talks with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (left, back row) as they stand for a photo session at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Manila, the Philippines, Thursday. (Yonhap)
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has demanded the removal of a statue of a teenage Korean girl, a symbol of Korean victims of Japan’s wartime sexual slavery, as a condition for settling the issue involving the victims, according to a news report Thursday.
Citing a Tokyo official, the Japanese daily Asahi Shimbun reported that Abe made the demand during his first-ever bilateral summit with South Korean President Park Geun-hye at Cheong Wa Dae on Nov. 2.
Seoul’s Foreign Ministry said the report was “different from the truth.”
“We would like to refrain from divulging the content of the summit,” ministry spokesperson Cho June-hyuck told reporters. “We express regrets over the fact that there have been reports from Japan that are not true or distorted.”
According to the report, Abe called for the removal of the statue in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul and reiterated that the issue of the Korean victims — euphemistically called comfort women — has already been settled through the 1965 treaty that normalized bilateral ties.
The report also said that Tokyo is considering establishing a follow-up to the botched Asian Women’s Fund that Japan set up in 1995 for Asian victims, many of whom were Korean. It has also considered sending a letter from the prime minister to each of the victims, the report said. [Korea Herald]
