By This is not a surprising response from the Japanese government considering their past stance on this issue:
Japan has turned down South Korea’s proposal to hold bilateral talks about Korean women who were forced into sexual slavery with Japanese soldiers during the second World War.
The Japanese Foreign Ministry’s Director-General for the Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau Shinsuke Sugiyama said on Monday that compensation for comfort women was fully settled by a 1965 agreement.
Sugiyama made the comment during an interview with South Korean reporters that visited the Foreign Ministry in Tokyo.
He said he believes that Japan should look squarely at history and decide which way to move forward, adding that Tokyo will seek to appropriately address the South Korean government’s requests for consultations on the matter.
Last month, Seoul proposed holding the bilateral talks on the sex slave issue based on a dispute resolution procedure under the 1965 agreement. The resolution calls for settling disputes through diplomatic efforts if the two sides disagree over the interpretations of the accord. [KBS Global]
With elections coming up in South Korea next year I would expect these easy red meat anti-Japan political issues to become more front and center in the upcoming months.
8:28 am on October 5th, 2011 1
What does the international courts have to say about the validity of agreements signed by and with an illegitimate government?
8:51 pm on October 7th, 2011 2
It seems S. Korea is more concerned about what happened 60 years ago than how Koreans enslave or traffic other Koreans in the sex industry today…
http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/rights-so-divine/2011/sep/26/south-korea-stimulus-plan-sexism-and-human-traffic/
10:17 pm on October 7th, 2011 3
#2
isn’t it a bit silly they still make a huge stink about japan, then turn around and do the same thing to filipino women? granted in a much tamer manner and smaller scale. i know some people will take issue with that statement, but they do exploit the crap out of filipino women and then punish them when they wise up and run away from a crappy situation.
here’s an idea: instead of spending so much money on immigration and finding the girls that run away from the club, why not monitor the working environment to ensure that basic human rights aren’t being taken away? then maybe you wouldn’t have so many girls running away from clubs. seems more fiscally reasonable and ethical to me.
5:52 am on October 8th, 2011 4
#3,
It’s not silly. Governments should not behave like organized crime syndicates.
PS. Did the Japanese government refuse to accept the apologies it received from Canada and the United States a few years ago for their internment camps during WW2?
12:09 pm on October 8th, 2011 5
#4
what were you disagreeing with me about again? it seemed as if we were on the same exact page….
7:44 pm on October 8th, 2011 6
It seems to me this (and some other of Japan’s WW2 related issues) are just not going to go away until everyone with conscious memories of that era have passed on. Given that, I don’t see how issuing apologies and/or shoveling out trillions of yen to those who fell aggrieved makes any sense.