S Korea, Japan hold rare 'comfort women' talks

I do hope they can settle this and move on. I can understand it being a sensitive issue but dragging it out longer and longer can't feel good for those survivors from the time.

Giving apologies and money over and over again is no good. Those oldies are going to die with such heavy feeling in their heart. Forgiveness and moving on is necessary. They've wasted so much of their golden days as their government's puppet. They're tools to divert their government's WEAK claim on some islet. Trust me, these whiny old nationalistic ladies will continue the usual annoyance after this "HIGH LEVEL" talk. I pity them.

whiny old nationalistic ladies

The most heartless comment of the day award goes to titanD.

I'm sure apologists would love the victims of Japan's wartime aggression just die and fade away so they can pretend it never happened. If Japan is truly the peace-loving country it likes to portray itself it will honorably maintain its awareness of accountability and remorse for the many who suffered under its brutal wartime regime.

What Germany Can Teach Japan ---------- http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/17/opinion/what-germany-can-teach-japan.html?hp&rref=opinion&_r=0

spot on sooner41.

Hopefully, they can work it out so it is no longer an issue.

sooner41Apr. 17, 2014 - 09:08AM JST

What Germany Can Teach Japan ---------- http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/17/opinion/what-germany-can-teach-japan.html?hp&rref=opinion&_r=0

Thank you, sooner41. I read the NYT article you linked.

the easiest way to unwind its effect would be to make an impressive, lasting statement of guilt.

I do not mean to ridicule the article, but what was the "impressive lasting statement of guilt" which Germany made? Does anyone know?

why his government didn't react to the proposal of President Park Geun-hye of South Korea to set up a committee for jointly developing history schoolbooks, after the Franco-German model,

Actually, Korea Japan joint history study committee was created in 2001 and the joint history study has been going on for more than a decade, producing many joint research papers which just revealed disagreement on everything about historical relationship between Korea and Japan. http://www.jkcf.or.jp/projects/kaigi/history/

It seems we need fresh ideas.

The comfort women issue is a major stumbling block in smoothing relations between the two countries. It should be removed.

Money makes the world go round and this is exactly what South Korea wants.

South Korea wants Japan to officially accept their terms hands down so it doesn't have to live up to the 1965 Treaty.

They want Japan to pay what South Korea agreed to pay back then.

Proof of this is the fact that Japan is willing to pay none official payment to the so called Comfort women, but South Korea wants an Official Government payment.

Love the hypocrisy of South Korea, they took Japan's money in 65 and agreed to pay it's people, but never did. Now, it wants Japan to pay some more.

JoeBigsApr. 17, 2014 - 08:18PM JST Money makes the world go round and this is exactly what South Korea wants. South Korea wants Japan to officially accept their terms hands down so it doesn't have to live up to the 1965 Treaty. They want Japan to pay what South Korea agreed to pay back then.

However, Japan has not always held its current position. The Japanese government had the intention to compensate those forced into labor individually and to treat their right to claim separately from that of Korea. The Korea-Japan negotiations in 1961 shows that the Japanese PM Ikeda at the time, suggested such measures to former President Park Chung-hee. Ikeda is quoted as saying that his government was willing to apply the same standards it was using to compensate Japanese nationals to Korean victims. Ikeda is also on record as saying that his government would consider providing pension and consolation payments to those who had returned to Korea. Japan will not disclose the part that contain the Korean government’s response. If those parts are disclosed, the fact that the money they provided in 1965 was not for conscription victims will be made clear. If those parts are revealed, it might show that Japan told the Korean government not to give that money to the victims. Diplomatic records are usually made public after 30 years. It has been 50 years since the negotiations, and the fact that Japanese government are unwilling to open the records even today might proves that they know just how much wrong they did. The reason Japan goverment might be keeping the remainder of the documents secret was that the records would prove that the victims had not been compensated, which would in turn lead to huge costs.

@ CH3CHO

Academia in Korea has not evolved to the degree where academics could risk stating objective facts in this area. Look on Youtube for videos where Korean academics doing so are beaten up in public in lecture halls by Korean nationalists, (or possibly government enforcers). Look back a little further to what when on during the dictatorship era when individuals, or even entire families disappeared and suffer total losses. Especially those seen to have any Japanese sympathies.

To call them pogroms, is not far short of the truth. Many high level individuals were murdered and families ruined within living memory.

Japan Hate and denial has become a widespread but not universal culture which Koreans are indoctrinated into and is much safer to adopt. They have their own brand of historical revisions and it is almost completely established now which is why Koreans or Korean-Americans coming into the international realm have such a difficult time with more diverse views of the facts. Because of the past, they react strongly and repressively to the cognitive dissonance it creates within them, a strange mix of fear, anger and explosive repression.

There are some good American-Korean academics who have had to leave Korea to develop and express their full academic potential (... objectivity and impartiality), or were lucky enough to be born in the USA where freedom of speech is enshrine and there is healthy academic debate, and courageous journalism.

It would be better to work with them.

This isn't prejudice, it's a statement of fact. Try getting a few drunk on their own and they'll tell you the real truth.

Giving apologies and money over and over again is no good.

Well, then Japanese politicians need to be made to stop backtracking on former apologies.

And to stop giving money over and over, the payments need to be made directly from the guilty party straight to the victims. Instead Japanese government gives money to the South Korean government and then asks for donations to pay the former sex slaves.

If Japan wants to do something once, they should do it right the first time!

Japan has long maintained that all issues relating to the colonial period were settled under a 1965 bilateral treaty that normalised diplomatic ties with South Korea.

EXACTLY. The issue should be dead. Twenty years after World War II, South Korea and Japan re-established diplomatic relations with the 1965 signing of the Treaty on Basic Relations. In 2005, South Korea disclosed diplomatic documents that detailed the proceedings of the treaty. Kept secret in South Korea for 40 years, the documents revealed that Japan provided 500 million dollars in soft loans and 300 million in grants to South Korea as compensation for the reign of Japan. and that South Korea agreed to demand no more compensation after the treaty, either at a government-to-government level or an individual-to-government level. It was also revealed that the South Korean government assumed the responsibility for compensating individuals on a lump sum basis while rejecting Japan's proposal for direct compensation. END OF STORY!! Japan has no responsibility to pay a single yen won, dollar, and or peso at all. DONE DEAL. Let it go and move forward. They lied to their people for forty years and that is not the fault of the Japanese at all.

the offer of another apology and further compensation would be formalised only after confirming the issue “has been completely settled”, so that South Korea never brings it up again.

As if they would let it go. NOT GOING TO HAPPEN. They will never let this issue go.