S. Korea to urge talks with Japan on compensating sex slaves
South Korea's foreign minister will ask his Japanese counterpart to hold talks over compensating Korean women who were exploited as sex slaves under Japan's colonial rule, local media reported Friday.
Kim Sung-hwan plans to raise the issue at a scheduled meeting Saturday with his Japanese counterpart Koichiro Gemba on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, the Yonhap News Agency said, citing an unspecified diplomatic source.
The move comes after the Constitutional Court in Seoul said the South Korean government violated fundamental rights of the so- called "comfort women" by making no conspicuous efforts to push Japan to compensate them.
Korean wartime sex slaves, whose number the government in the 1990s said stood at 234, were among some 100,000 to 200,000 Asian women forced to provide sexual service to the Imperial Japanese Army.
The foreign ministry called in deputy chief of Japanese embassy in Seoul earlier this month and urged Japan to take "more active and sincere" measures to address the issue, but Japan has yet to officially respond.
Japan claimed that the 1965 Treaty of Basic Relations with South Korea, which formally normalized their ties, already addressed all legal issues concerning the comfort women.
Editor: An
English.news.cn 2011-09-23 14:48:48 FeedbackPrintRSS
SEOUL, Sept. 22 (Xinhua)
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