With the leaders of Japan and South Korea at odds over a 2015 agreement to resolve the "comfort women" issue but agreeing to build "future-oriented" relations, they are likely to use a dual-track approach to ensure the rift does not undermine cooperation in dealing with North Korea.
In his first meeting Friday with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, South Korean President Moon Jae-in said most South Koreans cannot accept the agreement struck between his ousted predecessor Park Geun-hye and Abe. But it is not known whether Moon sought to renegotiate it during the meeting, which took place on the fringes of the Group of 20 summit in Hamburg, Germany.
During his presidential campaign, the former human rights lawyer pledged to renegotiate the agreement about the Korean comfort women — Japan's euphemism for the girls and women forced into its military wartime brothels during Japan's 1910 to 1945 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula.