South Korean President Park Geun-hye, right, and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe pose for photos before their meeting at the presidential Blue House in Seoul, South Korea, Monday, Nov. 2, 2015. Yonhap via AP
SEOUL, South Korea—North Korea has insisted it should be included in any deal reached between South Korea and Japan over Korean “comfort women” forced to work in Japanese military brothels during World War II.
READ: Japan, South Korea agree to work to resolve WWII sex slave issue
Just days after Tokyo and Seoul agreed to work together to resolve the issue, which has dogged their ties for decades, Pyongyang signalled that it would seek a slice of any compensation deal that might emerge.
“There are victims of the sexual slavery for the Imperial Japanese Army not only in the south of Korea but also in the north,” a foreign ministry spokesman was quoted as saying by the North’s official KCNA news agency overnight Thursday.
“Japan should admit the state responsibility for all hideous crimes committed against the Korean people… and make reparations for them in such a manner as to be understandable to all Koreans,” the spokesman said.
READ: South Korea, Japan to hold talks on comfort women
South Korean President Park Geun-Hye and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said they would step up efforts to settle the “comfort women” issue when they met in Seoul on Monday for their first ever one-on-one summit.
Their statement offered no commitment by either side, and most observers say the prospect of substantial financial reparations by Tokyo are slim.
Japan maintains that the comfort women issue was settled in a 1965 normalization agreement, which saw Tokyo make a total payment of $800 million in grants or loans to its former colony.
Mainstream historians say up to 200,000 women, mostly from Korea but also from China, Indonesia and other Asian nations, were forced into sexual slavery during the war.
South Korea has 53 surviving comfort women. The number in North Korea is unknown.