Japan, South Korea to hold talks on comfort women in WWII

Japan and South Korea will hold talks on Tokyo's wartime sexual enslavement of Korean women in the Second World War (WWII), the Japanese Foreign Ministry said on Sunday. The talks, scheduled on Wednesday, are at the director general level, with Japan to be represented by Junichi Ihara, head of the Foreign Ministry's Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau, and South Korea by Lee Sang Deok, director general of the South Korean Foreign Ministry's Northeast Asian Affairs Bureau. The Japanese Foreign Ministry said that Tokyo is ready to discuss bilateral issues at various levels to improve relations between the two countries. In the Second World War, Japan forced thousands of innocent women from South Korea and China into sexual slavery for its servicemen. The issue of comfort women and Tokyo's reluctance to acknowledge its wartime crimes have impeded the development of Japan's ties with its neighbors.