Civic organizations from South Korea and China have erected two statues in a park in northern Seoul to memorialize Korean and Chinese "comfort women" recruited to work in Japanese wartime military brothels.
A representative of the South Korean group said similar statues will be set up in Shanghai and San Francisco.
"Diplomatic relations (with Japan) have been considered, but we concluded (the erection of such statues) are from entirely humanitarian grounds, not from political," an official from the Seongbuk District Office said Wednesday.