South Korea's ruling and opposition parties showed mixed responses Monday to the outcome of talks between the top diplomats of Seoul and Tokyo on the issue of Korean women forced into sexual slavery for the Japanese army during World War II.
Evaluating the deal as significant progress, the ruling Saenuri Party called for the Japanese government's diligent and specific course of action to fulfill the agreement.
"It is a deal with considerable improvement in that the responsibility of the Japanese government has been stipulated," Lee Jang-woo, a spokesman of the ruling party, said.
The remarks came during a press briefing held after the top diplomats of South Korea and Japan held talks in Seoul earlier in the day, during which Tokyo agreed to take responsibility for the issue.
Under the deal, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe apologized to the Korean victims and Tokyo agreed to provide a 1 billion yen (US$8.3 million) in reparations to the victims through a fund to be created by the South Korean government.
In return, South Korea will refrain from criticizing Japan over the issue.
The main opposition New Politics Alliance for Democracy, however, said it cannot accept the deal as the Japanese government avoided legal responsibility.
"In the agreement, Japanese government's responsibility is restricted in the boundary of ethics," the party's spokesman Kim Sung-soo said. "Considering that the biggest issue was the Japanese government's acknowledgement of legal responsibility, (the result) is very disappointing."
"We feel very sorry that the (South Korean) government vowed to end the dispute once and for all," Kim added.
The issue of former Korean sex slaves has long been a thorn in diplomatic ties between Seoul and Tokyo as Japan's conservative politicians are viewed as having not done enough to resolve the long-standing grievance regarding the Korean victims.
According to historians, more than 200,000 women, mostly Koreans, were coerced into sexual servitude at front-line Japanese brothels during World War II when the Korean Peninsula was a Japanese colony. Those sex slaves were euphemistically called "comfort women." (Yonhap)
