Japanese government rules out further action on comfort women agreement

Posted on : 2018-01-10 16:46 KST Modified on : 2019-10-19 20:29 KST
The Abe administration termed the decision not to implement the deal as “utterly unacceptable”
Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono
Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono

The Japanese government blasted as “utterly unacceptable” South Korea’s announcement that a 2015 intergovernmental agreement on the comfort women issue was not a true resolution to the matter.

“The agreement between Japan and South Korea is a pledge between countries, and it is unacceptable [for South Korea] not to implement it simply because its government has changed,” Foreign Minister Taro Kono said on Jan. 9.

Kono also said it was “utterly unacceptable for the South Korean side to demand additional measures from Japan when the comfort women issue was confirmed to have been finally and irreversibly resolved [with the 2015 agreement].”

He further said the agreement was “unquestionably a crucial foundation [for bilateral relations] in Japan and South Korea’s cooperation in several areas, including responding to the North Korean threat.”

When asked by reporters about Tokyo’s response to South Korea’s plans to use government money to offset its contribution of one billion yen (US$8.9 million), Kono replied, “I don’t really know any more than what the South Korean government announced.”

“First of all, I would like to hear a clear explanation [from South Korea] on their true intentions,” he added.

Kono said he planned to “protest” the matter with Seoul. But when asked if the Japanese ambassador to South Korea would be temporarily called home, he replied on that he “would like to see appropriate actions for now from Tokyo and Seoul.”

Kenji Kanasugi, Director-General of the Japanese Foreign Ministry's Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau, summoned Lee Hee-seop, a state affairs minister at the South Korean Embassy in Japan, to the ministry the same day to announce that Tokyo “cannot accept South Korea demanding any further measures from Japan.”

In remarks that day, South Korean Minister of Foreign Affairs Kang Kyung-wha said she “hope[d] to see Japan acknowledging the whole truth according to universal international standards and continuing to work to restore the victims’ reputations and dignity and heal their emotional wounds.” But the likelihood of Japan taking any further action is seen as realistically very slim.

When asked by the Diet in Oct. 2016 whether he planned any “additional emotional measures” such as a letter of apology to comfort women survivors, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe replied that he did not “have the slightest intention” to do so. In a briefing on the morning of Jan. 9, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said the agreement had “not budged a millimeter.”

Observers in Japan concluded that while the two sides will try to avoid any dramatic confrontations due to the need for a joint response on the North Korea issue, a chill in the two sides’ relations appears unavoidable for the time being.

The NHK network interpreted Seoul’s decision not to demand renegotiation as “an attempt to strike a balance between domestic opinion opposing the comfort women agreement and diplomatic ties with Japan.” It went on to say that South Korea’s “refusal to bend in its position that the problem is not resolved is expected to have some impact on the future of Japan-South Korea relations.”

By Cho Ki-weon, Tokyo correspondent

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]

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