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Japan to Withhold Compensation Until S.Korea Removes ‘Comfort Women’ Statue

© AFP 2023 / JUNG YEON-JEA South Korean policeman walks past a statue (C) of a teenage girl in traditional costume called the "peace monument" for former "comfort women" who served as sex slaves for Japanese soldiers during World War II, in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul on December 29, 2015.
A South Korean policeman walks past a statue (C) of a teenage girl in traditional costume called the peace monument for former comfort women who served as sex slaves for Japanese soldiers during World War II, in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul on December 29, 2015. - Sputnik International
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Japan will not pay out the $8.3 million in compensation it pledged this week to support Korean women who were enslaved by Japanese forces during World War II unless South Korea dismantles a statue dedicated to the victims, government sources told local media.

South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se, right, shakes hands with his Japanese counterpart Fumio Kishida after their joint press conference at Foreign Ministry in Seoul, South Korea, Monday, Dec. 28, 2015. The foreign ministers said they had reached a deal meant to resolve a decades-long impasse over Korean women forced into Japanese military-run brothels during World War II, a potentially dramatic breakthrough between the Northeast Asian neighbors and rivals - Sputnik International
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Japan Apologizes for WWII 'Comfort Women' Issue, Agrees to Pay Compensation
TOKYO (Sputnik) – The 1-billion-yen support fund of so-called comfort women was agreed to on Monday in addition to an official apology for the coerced sexual servitude of South Korean women by the Imperial Japanese Army.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe tied the $8.3 million fund with the removal of the "comfort women" statue outside the Japanese Embassy in Seoul, the Kyodo news services cited the source as saying Wednesday.

Additionally, Tokyo has requested that the dispute be closed permanently with Monday’s agreement.

Public opinion in Japan is divided over the agreement. Opponents decry the failure of Japanese diplomacy, citing no joint statement following the talks, the tenfold growth of the support fund and no clear commitment from Seoul to remove the statue.

Up to 200,000 women, most of them Korean, are estimated to have been forced to work in brothels in service of Japanese soldiers in wartime.

Earlier on Thursday, the Seoul district court opened hearings in a lawsuit filed by 12 comfort women in 2013, 10 of whom remain alive and each seek $85,000 in damages.

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