Abe to announce self-reflection on war
By Yi Whan-woo
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Monday that Japan would reflect on its atrocities during World War II in his statement to be announced in August to commemorate the 70th anniversary of its end.
In an interview with Hong Kong’s Phoenix Satellite Television Holdings held at his Tokyo office, Abe said Japan deeply regretted its wrongdoings during the war, and would never repeat them. He said Japan’s constitutional revision regarding its security won’t lead to military conflict between Japan and China.
Abe noted that his administration respects the Murayama and Kono statements of apology for the war.
He said Tokyo will make efforts to improve relations with Beijing which were soured due to a territorial dispute over the Diaoyu Islands, named the Senkaku Islands in Japan.
In the meantime, Korea and Japan are making the 2012 “Sasae Proposal,” the backbone of their efforts to strike a deal over Tokyo’s wartime sex slavery, a foreign ministry official said Monday.
Named after Japan’s then Vice Minister for Foreign Affairs Kenichiro Sasae, the proposal in March 2012 was seen as the key to ending the decades-long dispute between Seoul and Tokyo over Japan’s sexual enslavement of Korean women before and during World War II.
“We’re taking major elements of the proposal into consideration in our negotiations,” the official told The Korea Times.
His comment came after President Park Geun-hye said in a Washington Post interview on June 11 that Korea and Japan were in the “final stages” of negotiations over the issue.
During his visit to Seoul at that time, Sasae offered a three-point draft proposal to settle the dispute.
They were a face-to-face apology to be conveyed by the then Japanese Ambassador to Korea to the victims, a letter of apology from the Japanese Prime Minister and establishing a fund for humanitarian purposes.
Negotiations between the Lee Myung-bak administration and Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda’s Cabinet failed because the Lee government found the fund problematic. It insisted the fund should be set up to pay compensation.
“We’re aware of the fact that several years have passed since the proposal was made,” the official said. “We are discussing various measures to back up the proposal.”
Seoul has had eight rounds of discussions with Tokyo over the matter.
Another official said the two sides were also taking the Asian Women’s Fund as a model.
The fund was set up under Japanese Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama in 1995 to give financial support to about 360 sexual slavery victims in Korea, the Philippines, Taiwan and the Netherlands. The fund was comprised of publicly raised indemnity valued at 565 million yen ($4.58 million) and state-backed medical support worth 750 million yen.
But the fund triggered a backlash in Korea because most of the survivors refused to accept the private donation. They accused Japan of setting up the fund to avoid taking official legal responsibility for its wartime atrocities.