S. Korea, Japan hold working-level talks on 'comfort women' issue

SEOUL, Dec. 27 (Yonhap) -- South Korea and Japan held a working-level meeting Sunday on the issue of former Korean sex slaves for Japan's World War II soldiers, officials said. Lee Sang-deok, director-general handling Northeast Asian affairs at the Foreign Ministry, met with his Japanese counterpart, Kimihiro Ishikane, for around two hours in Seoul, the officials said. The two sides tried to work out differences and tried to come up with "creative alternatives" to ensure their top diplomats can produce a deal on wartime sexual slavery, the biggest thorn in the side of bilateral relations, they said. The director general-level meeting -- the 12th round of these talks -- was held a day before talks between Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se and his Japanese counterpart Fumio Kishida on the issue. South Korea and Japan have long been at odds over the issue of hundreds of thousands of Korean women forced to serve as sex slaves for Japanese troops during World War II. Korea was under Japan's brutal colonial rule from 1910 to 1945. South Korea demands Japan acknowledge its responsibility for the sex slaves, while Japan insists the issue was settled under the normalization treaty of 1965. "Our stance has not changed and will not change in the future," Yun told reporters Sunday, referring to the Seoul government's stance that Japan has not fulfilled its legal duty through the treaty. Yun further noted that he will try his best to reflect the government's argument through Monday's talks. South Korean victims voiced criticism, saying that only a sincere apology and a promise of appropriate compensation are needed. "Japan should talk about the issues of legal apology and compensation if it wants to sincerely compensate," Yoo Hee-nam, 88, told reporters. "We, who have been forcibly drafted, must receive Japan's official apology and compensation," Lee Ok-sun, another 89-year-old victim, said. In November, President Park Geun-hye met with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in their first bilateral summit, and they agreed to expedite consultations for the early resolution of the wartime sex slavery issue. The issue has gained urgency in recent years as the victims are dying off. In 2007, more than 120 South Korean victims were alive, but the number has since dropped to 46, with their average age standing at nearly 90.