Can Japan, South Korea move past the ‘comfort women’ issue?
The issue is set to continue rattling ties between Tokyo and Seoul even as they seek to find common ground on security and trade issues
They also suggest that the two nations would benefit from working together at a time of unprecedented regional and global security and economic challenges, although they admit that may be impossible.
On Sunday, a coalition of South Korean citizens’ groups called on the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation to move forward with the listing of documents about wartime comfort women on its Memory of the World Register.
The request was made at a press conference in Seoul more than a decade after groups from eight countries first requested that Unesco collate and preserve victims’ testimonies and other paperwork related to the sexual slavery of women from across Asia imposed by Japanese troops.
