Calls are growing for the government to offer an official apology to the wartime sex slaves, known as "comfort women," and to provide them with compensation through legislation.
In 1993, then Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono acknowledged the forced recruitment of women into sexual servitude for the Imperial Japanese Army and apologized to the victims in a statement, but the victims and their supporters say this brought little satisfaction.
As the 100th anniversary of Japan's annexation of the Korean Peninsula is marked this year, more than 610,000 people from Japan, South Korea and other countries, including the Philippines, the United States and the Netherlands, signed a petition to seek a drastic solution to the sex slave issue.