S. Korea urges Japan to hold talks over wartime sex slaves

South Korea delivered a letter to Japan Tuesday, renewing its call for bilateral talks over compensating Korean women forced into sexual slavery under Japan's 1910-45 colonial rule, the foreign ministry said. Japan has ignored repeated calls by South Korea for such talks, which came about after the country's top court ruled the government's apparent lack of efforts to resolve the issue unconstitutional. With Japan mum on the proposal, the foreign ministry here called in a Japanese diplomat earlier Tuesday to formally deliver the letter, according to ministry spokesman Cho Byung-je. Japan has claimed its 1965 Treaty of Basic Relations with South Korea, which formally normalized their ties, already addressed all legal issues concerning sex slaves, often euphemistically called " comfort women". Some 100,000 to 200,000 Asian women were forced to provide sexual service to the Imperial Japanese Army during the World War II.