Japan Balks at Calls for New

Apology to South Korea Over

‘Comfort Womenʼ
By Motoko Rich Jan. 12, 2018

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan in Tokyo in October. He said on

Friday that a 2015 deal with South Korea to make reparations for sexual
slavery in World War II “was a promise between countries,” and called a
request for a further apology “unacceptable.”Behrouz Mehri/Agence
France-Presse — Getty Images

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan in Tokyo in October. He said on Friday that a 2015 deal with South Korea to
make reparations for sexual slavery in World War II “was a promise between countries,” and called a request for
a further apology “unacceptable.”Behrouz Mehri/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

TOKYO — On matters of history, Japan and South Korea can never seem
to agree to disagree.

Three days after South Korea said it would not roll back a 2015 accord
over women forced into sexual slavery for the Japanese military during
World War II, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan rejected on Friday
“additional measures” sought by Seoul.

The issue even threatened to jeopardize his attendance at the Winter

Olympicsʼ opening ceremony next month.

Responding to a call by South Koreaʼs president, Moon Jae-in, for a

renewed and sincere apology to the so-called comfort women, Mr. Abe
told reporters, “We can by no means accept South Koreaʼs unilateral
request for additional measures.”

“The Japan-South Korea deal was a promise between countries,” Mr. Abe
said. “It is an international and universal principle to keep it.”

The issue of the sex slaves remains the deepest longstanding wound
between the two countries, with critics on each side accusing the other
of twisting or whitewashing history. The latest developments threaten to
ignite a fresh diplomatic debate at a time when Japan and South Korea
face a continuing nuclear crisis on the Korean Peninsula.

When, in late 2015, the South Korean president, Park Geun-hye, signed
the agreement with Mr. Abe, the two countries said it was a “final and
irreversible” settlement of the wartime issue.

The deal included a Japanese government apology and an $8.8 million

fund to help provide old-age care for survivors. But the agreement was
immediately criticized in South Korea as insufficient; after Ms. Park was
impeached in 2016 and Mr. Moon was elected as her successor, he
pledged to review the deal.

A government-appointed panel concluded that South Korea had failed to

represent the victimsʼ demands for Japan to take legal responsibility and
offer official reparations.

Mr. Moonʼs government said this week it would not renegotiate the deal,
but on Tuesday, his foreign minister, Kang Kyung-wha, said the 2015
settlement could not be regarded as “a genuine resolution.” She added
that South Korea would set aside its own $8.8 million fund for the victims,
while discussing with Japan what to do with its contribution.

The next day, Mr. Moon called on Japan to “apologize with wholehearted
sincerity to the victims and take this as a lesson so as to avoid the
recurrence of such atrocities by making efforts in conjunction with the
international community.”

Mr. Abe told journalists the request for an additional apology was
“unacceptable.”

With the issue flaring a month before the opening ceremony of the
Winter Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea, on Feb. 9, the Japanese
news media reported that Mr. Abe might boycott the event.

President Moon Jae-in of South Korea, center, met this month at the
presidential compound in Seoul with women forced into brothels for
Japanese soldiers in World War II.South Korea President Office, via
European Pressphoto Agency
President Moon Jae-in of South Korea, center, met this month at the presidential compound in Seoul with
women forced into brothels for Japanese soldiers in World War II.South Korea President Office, via European
Pressphoto Agency

Mr. Abeʼs office said he was still deciding whether to go, given that a new
session of Parliament was set to open on Jan. 22. Mr. Abe attended the
opening ceremony at the Winter Olympics in 2014 in Sochi, Russia, even
though he missed part of a parliamentary session to do so.

Many commentators in Japan supported Mr. Abeʼs pushback on South

Koreaʼs demand. Even an editorial in the left-leaning daily Asahi Shimbun,
which is often critical of Mr. Abe, said Seoulʼs latest statement on the
2015 accord “is not consistent with past developments,” adding that
“Japan should consider all positive options for maintaining the
agreement, without being told by South Korea what to do.”

Several analysts said Japan had repeatedly apologized to the women

forced to work in Japanese military brothels, dating to a landmark
statement 25 years ago in which Yohei Kono, then the chief cabinet
secretary, acknowledged that the Japanese military had played some role
in forcing Korean women to provide sex to soldiers.

Critics, however, noted that before becoming prime minister for the
second time in 2012, Mr. Abe publicly questioned whether Japanʼs
imperial military actually coerced Korean women into sexual slavery.

Asking for a new apology indicates that the South Korean government is
tacitly trying to revise the 2015 agreement that was meant to settle the
issue, said Yoshiki Mine, a former official with the Japanese Foreign
Ministry and now head of the Institute for Peaceful Diplomacy, a research
organization. “The Korean position is so contradictory and so confusing
and problematic,” Mr. Mine said.

Koichi Nakano, a political scientist at Sophia University in Tokyo, said the

2015 agreement was flawed because it was made between government
leaders and did not include the voices of the victims.
“When you are talking about victims of human rights abuses, you canʼt
come to a resolution without their presence and consent,” he said. “As
long as there are people who are not convinced that the apologies are
heartfelt or that the compensation is adequate, then of course the
aggressor would continue to ask for forgiveness and atonement.”

In South Korea, Mr. Moonʼs party, the Democratic Party of Korea, said the
2015 agreement did not go far enough.

“What the victims of wartime sexual slavery want is recognition of legal

responsibility,” Kim Hyon, a spokeswoman for the party, said in a
statement.

Veteran diplomats in Japan said the two countries needed to figure out
how to put the controversy behind them so they could focus on security
cooperation and other current concerns.

The point of the 2015 deal “was that Japan and Korea would remove this
issue from the centrality of our political relationship,” said Kazuhiko Togo,
a former Japanese ambassador to the Netherlands and a professor of
international relations at Kyoto Sangyo University. “We are fighting each
other. That we have to stop.”

But sticking to the 2015 agreement, Mr. Togo said, “doesnʼt mean that
Japan is now in a position to forget.”

Follow Motoko Rich on Twitter: @MotokoRich.

Makiko Inoue and Hisako Ueno contributed reporting from Tokyo, and
Su-hyun Lee from Seoul, South Korea.

A version of this article appears in print on Jan. 13, 2018, on Page A9 of

the New York edition with the headline: Japan Balks at Calls for New
Apology Over Wartime ‘Comfort Womenʼ. Order Reprints | Todayʼs Paper
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