Both Korea's call on Japan to face up to the truth about its Wartime Cruelty

South Korea calls Japan to action on wartime past

April 1 2007 Rueters

SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea's foreign minister on Saturday urged Japan to settle disputes arising from its militaristic past to allow relations between the two countries to improve.

Song Min-soon's comments came after Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe angered South Koreans earlier this month when he said there was no evidence Japan's government or army had forced women, many of them Koreans, to serve as sex slaves for Japanese soldiers during World War Two.

"Like today's weather, there is turbulence (in the relationship between South Korea and Japan,)" Song was quoted by officials as telling his Japanese counterpart Taro Aso.

"The clouds above us and the fog ahead must be cleared, and it is a task for us, not the past generations that committed wrongs," Song said at the start of talks in the resort island of Cheju.

Abe has since repeated a previous apology by Tokyo over the so-called "comfort women," saying he stood by a 1993 government statement on the issue.

Aso reiterated Abe's apology and expression of sympathy to the women who had been forced into sexual slavery, Japanese and South Korean officials said after the meeting.

Aso said later that he, Song and Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing would hold three-way talks in Cheju on June 3, Japan's Kyodo news agency reported.

Japan's ties with both China and South Korea chilled under Abe's predecessor, Junichiro Koizumi, who made annual visits to the Yasukuni shrine in Tokyo where Japanese leaders convicted as war criminals by an Allied tribunal are honored along with war dead.

Abe has tried to improve relations, visiting both countries for leaders' summits after taking office in September.

Aso proposed the resumption of bilateral free trade talks with South Korea, which were suspended in 2004, and Song pledged a positive review once Seoul's trade talks with the United States conclude.

The two ministers also agreed on the early resumption of six-country talks on ending North Korea's nuclear weapons program, officials said.

(Additional reporting by Linda Sieg in Tokyo)

Noth Korea Blasts Japan For Wartime Atrocities, Sexual Slavery



SEOUL, March 8 Asia Pulse - North Korea on March 7 lashed out at Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe for what it called his efforts to negate Japan's past crimes related to forcing thousands of Korean women into sexual slavery.

"No matter how desperately the Japanese authorities may try to whitewash the crime-woven past of Japan and cover up the crimes related to the 'comfort women' for the imperial Japanese army, the worst flesh traffic in the 20th century, they are historical facts that Japan can neither sidestep nor deny," an unidentified spokesman for the North's Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

"What should not be overlooked is that Abe has taken the lead in totally negating the crimes, asserting that there is no evidence proving the forcible recruitment of 'comfort women' for the imperial Japanese army," the statement carried by the North's state-run Korean Central News Agency said.

The statement is a repeat of Pyongyang's criticism of Tokyo, which colonized the Korean Peninsula from 1910 through 1945.

But it comes amid a fresh dispute over the countries' shared past, as the Japanese prime minister has claimed that the well-documented history of his nation is "not based on objective facts."

The U.S. House of Representatives is currently considering a resolution, calling on Japan to admit and apologize for its World War II atrocities.

Abe has said his government stands by a government apology issued in 1993 by then Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono, but declared he would not make any fresh apologies, claiming there was no "coercion" by the Japanese military in forcing Korean women and many others from other Asian nations into sexual slavery.

The North's Foreign Ministry spokesman said Abe's claim represented "the revival of Japanese militarism."

"No denial can ever write off or tamper with history. Japan will certainly be forced to pay for the crimes related to the sexual slavery," said the statement.

(Yonhap)