The following is a chronology of events leading to an agreement on Monday between Korea and Japan to resolve Tokyo's wartime sexual enslavement of Korean women.
― President Park Geun-hye calls on Japan to face up to history and take responsibility for its wartime wrongdoings at her address marking Korea's 1919 nationwide uprising against Japan's 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula.
― Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe tells the Diet that he would not uphold the 1995 apology over Tokyo's aggression and colonial rule during World War II as it is. The so-called Murayama Statement, which states Japan's apology for its colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula, has been regarded as a key element of the basis of relations between Seoul and Tokyo.
― The U.S. House of Representatives includes "comfort women" issue in a spending bill for 2014, calling on the secretary of state to spur the implementation of a 2007 resolution on Japan's wartime sex slaves.
― Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se denounces Japan's repeated attempts to deny its history of forcing Korean and other Asian women to serve as sex slaves for imperial Japanese soldiers during World War II in his keynote speech at the United Nations' Human Rights Council in Geneva.
― Abe says Japan has no plan to revise a 1993 landmark apology over its wartime sexual enslavement of Korean women, known as the Kono Statement, amid growing criticism over Tokyo's attempts to deny the atrocity.
― South and Japan kick off working-level talks aimed at exploring ways to resolve the sex slave issue.
― U.S. President Barack Obama calls the sex slave issue "a terrible, egregious violation of human rights" at a joint press conference after holding a summit with President Park in Seoul.
― South Korea expresses deep regret over Japan's review of the Kono Statement which acknowledged and apologized for the Japanese military's "coercion" of women into sexual slavery.
― Navi Pillay, then-High Commissioner for the United Nations Human Rights Commission, expresses "profound regret" over Japan's failure to resolve the sex slave issue, calling on Tokyo to seek a "comprehensive, impartial and lasting resolution" to it.
― Park and Abe agree to encourage their officials to move forward working-level talks on the sex slave issue when they met in Beijing during a gala dinner on the sidelines of a summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC).
― Top diplomats from South Korea and Japan hold a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of a trilateral foreign ministers' meeting involving Seoul, Beijing and Tokyo. The three-way talks were held for the first time in about three years.
― Abe fails to apologize for Japan's sex slavery in a speech to the U.S. Congress, only saying Japan's wartime actions brought suffering to Asian people and he upholds the views of his predecessors on history.
― Abe issues a statement to mark the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II, but he did not offer a fresh apology over Japan's wartime atrocities including the sex slave issue.
― Park and Abe hold their first summit where they agreed to speed up the two countries' talks for an early resolution of the sex slave issue.
― Korea and Japan hold the 12th round of working-level talks aimed at resolving the comfort women issue. The talks were launched in April 2014.
― Korea and Japan strike a deal on the resolution of Japan's sex slave issue when their foreign ministers held talks in Seoul. Abe expresses an "apology, repentance from the heart" to victims of Tokyo's sex slavery.
(Yonhap)