S. Korea and Japan pact on sex slaves in danger

TOKYO - Just days after the Japanese and South Korean governments announced a surprise agreement to resolve a decades-old dispute over wartime sex slaves, opposition on both sides is threatening to derail it.

In Tokyo, government officials were saying that the $8.3 million it agreed to put into a fund for the remaining 46 South Korean "comfort women," who were forced into sexual servitude during World War II, would not be paid until a statue to the women was removed from outside the Japanese Embassy in Seoul.

Meanwhile in Seoul, supporters of the women said they would put up other statues if the one outside the embassy was removed, and a South Korean court said it would hear a claim from 10 women for damages from Japan.

"It's remarkable how quickly a 'final and irreversible' agreement seems to be crumbling from both ends," said John Delury, an international relations expert at Yonsei University in Seoul.

Although the numbers are highly contentious, independent historians have concluded that as many as 200,000 women and girls - from occupied countries, including Korea, China, the Philippines, and other Southeast Asian nations - were coerced by the Japanese Imperial Army to work as sex slaves during the war.

Although Japan officially apologized and set up a fund for the surviving women in the mid-1990s, South Koreans have been incensed by comments made by associates of Shinzo Abe, who returned as Japan's prime minister three years ago. They have downplayed the numbers and suggested the women were simply prostitutes, enraging South Koreans, many of whom believe Japan has not properly atoned for its colonial actions.

The resulting tensions had seen relations between Japan and South Korea, the United States' two key allies in Asia, plumb new depths.

But in a surprise development on Monday, the foreign ministers of the two countries announced a deal that would see Japan pay into a fund for the 46 surviving "comfort women" and South Korea try to convince civil groups to remove the bronze statue from in front of the embassy that commemorates the victims. It is a focal point for anti-Japanese protests held outside the embassy most Wednesdays. Under the deal, both sides also agreed to refrain from criticizing each other publicly.

While Washington has welcomed the deal as a harbinger of better relations between its allies, the deal quickly proved controversial here.

A Japanese government official said the funds were contingent on removal of the statue, and that the South Korean government understood that, the Kyodo news agency reported.

"If it is true that Abe plans to make the donation contingent on removing the statue, this deal looks dead on arrival," Delury said.

In South Korea, the victims and their supporters have been sharply critical, but the general public seems more willing to accept the deal.