comfort woman

A deal between Japan and South Korea to settle a dispute over wartime sexual slavery helps create a path for the countries to work more closely on regional security, but a backlash in Korea threatens to complicate progress. On Monday, Tokyo and Seoul said they had “finally and irreversibly” resolved a decadeslong spat over reparations for Korean women used as forced sex workers by the Japanese military in the 1930s and 1940s. Under the deal, Tokyo agreed to pay around $8 million in support funds for the surviving women and extended an apology from Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. U.S. officials heralded the agreement as a breakthrough that improves coordination between its allies in Northeast Asia against the military threat from North Korea and China’s increasing assertiveness. A senior U.S. official said it was as strategically important for Washington as the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal. One potential step to increase bilateral cooperation is for Seoul to sign an agreement with Tokyo on sharing military intelligence, such as on North Korea’s nuclear missile program. South Korea has declined to complete the pact since 2012 because of domestic political pressure against closer links with Japan. Instead, the U.S. acts as a go-between to pass on information between the Asian nations. In October, South Korea’s defense minister told his Japanese counterpart that historical grievances, such as the issue of sexual slavery of Korean women, needed to be addressed before a deal can be forged on direct exchanges of intelligence. The so-called “comfort women” dispute is the core issue of several legacies of Japan’s 35-year colonization of the Korean peninsula from 1910 to the end of World War II that continue to irritate bilateral ties.