Whether the agreement reached by Japan and South Korea this week resolves the wartime "comfort women" issue "finally and irreversibly" will depend not only on the resolve of both governments, but also on the willingness of the citizens of both countries to move relations forward by overcoming mutual differences and put an end to the vicious cycle that prevents the two East Asian neighbors from moving toward "future-oriented" ties that their leaders have advocated for decades.
It is a compromise deal that may not satisfy all of the concerned parties, particularly the surviving Korean women who were sent to front-line brothels for Japanese troops before and during World War II. Since many of the basic differences over the sensitive issue were put aside for the sake of an agreement, public reactions in both countries may be hard to predict, depending on how the accord will be implemented. But we should welcome the deal if it contributes to ending the distrust between the two neighbors, whose relations, despite the close economic ties and exchanges of people, have so frequently been marred by issues deriving from Japan's colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula from 1910 to 1945 as well as the territorial row over the Takeshima islets in the Sea of Japan.
The agreement stated that the issue of comfort women "with an involvement of the Japanese military authorities" during the wartime was "a grave affront to the honor and dignity of large numbers of women" taken to the front-line brothels and that "the government of Japan is painfully aware of responsibilities from this perspective." It also featured Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's "most sincere apologies and remorse" to the women. Japan will contribute ¥1 billion out of its government budget to a foundation to be set up by Seoul to provide support for the former comfort women.