The government's top spokesman has repeated Japan's assertion that U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres welcomed the Japan-South Korea deal pertaining to Korean women who were forced to work in Japan's wartime military brothels when the U.N. chief met Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Italy.

"The truth is what the Japan side has announced," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said in a press conference on Monday.

His remark came after Antonio Guterres's spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, released a statement the previous day, saying the secretary general did not "pronounce himself on the content of a specific agreement" during his meeting with Abe on Saturday on the sidelines of the Group of Seven summit in the Italian city of Taormina.