Abe, Park put ‘comfort women’ on agenda
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SOUTH Korean President Park Geun-hye will hold a long-awaited summit with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe next week, with the sensitive issue of “comfort women” on the agenda, officials said yesterday.
It will be their first one-on-one meeting after an extended diplomatic freeze, during which Park turned down repeated requests to sit down with Abe.
A spokeswoman for the presidential Blue House said the summit will take place in Seoul next Monday, on the sidelines of a trilateral leadership gathering that will also include Chinese Premier Li Keqiang.
Park and Abe will “exchange ideas on issues of mutual concern including the ‘comfort women’ issue,” the spokeswoman said.
Relations between the two neighbors have never been easy — clouded by sensitive historical disputes related to Japan’s 1910-45 brutal colonial rule over the Korean Peninsula and, in particular, the issue of Korean women forcibly recruited to work in Japanese wartime military brothels.
Park’s previous refusals to meet Abe were predicated on her insistence that Tokyo had yet to properly atone for its past actions.
However, she has come under increasing pressure from the United States to compromise.
South Korean Ambassador to Japan Yoo Heung-soo, in a speech in Tokyo on Monday, urged Abe to make concessions on the issue when he meets Park.
In response, Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told reporters that “Japan’s position on the issue has not changed.”
Abe also indicated that the issue of sex slaves, called “comfort women” in Japan, would be part of the agenda.
“I hope to discuss frankly what kind of relations we are going to build toward the future,” he told reporters yesterday.
“There are a lot of issues that need to be discussed, and I believe there are many things that we can share,” he said.
The last summit between South Korea and Japan was held in December 2011, between then-leaders Lee Myung-bak and Yoshihiko Noda.
The trilateral leadership meetings with China were initiated in 2008 and held annually until 2012, when they were suspended after Seoul-Tokyo relations went into one of their regular tailspins.
Premier Li will represent China at the gathering and will hold a separate one-on-one meeting with President Park.
Seoul went public on Monday with its offer of a summit, but Tokyo was slow to respond, amid reports of behind-the-scenes bickering over how Japan’s wartime sex slavery might be addressed.
Park had initially signaled her willingness to meet Abe during a recent visit to Washington, but she stressed that in order for the summit to be “meaningful” there would have to be timely progress on the issue of “comfort women.”
Japan maintains the matter was “settled” in a 1965 normalization agreement, which saw Tokyo make a total payment of US$800 million in grants or loans to its former colony.
Further complicating rapprochement efforts is a bitter territorial dispute over a group of tiny South Korean-controlled islets.
While Abe remains deeply unpopular with the South Korean public — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has enjoyed higher approval ratings — repeated surveys have shown majority support for a summit and greater diplomatic cooperation.
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