Japan's foreign minister arrived in South Korea for fence-mending talks Saturday, as the issue of sexual slavery in Japan's World War II military brothels threatened to strain ties.
The international standoff over North Korea's nuclear program was also expected to be high on the agenda for the talks between Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso and his South Korean counterpart, Song Min-soon, on the resort island of Jeju, according to officials from both sides.
Aso arrived on Jeju on Saturday and was expected to begin talks with Song later in the day, a South Korean official said on condition of anonymity, citing policy.
Japan has come under international criticism after Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said in early March that there was no evidence that women were coerced into working at World War II brothels for Japanese troops.
Abe's remark was seen as backtracking from Tokyo's 1993 apology for having forced women into sexual slavery, prompting South Korea _ a former Japanese colony _ to express its regret twice in recent weeks.
Abe later said he sticks by the apology by then-Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono. On Monday, he offered his clearest apology yet to the victims, although he stopped short of clearly acknowledging Tokyo's coercion of women during the war.
"I express my sympathy toward the `comfort women' and apologize for the situation they found themselves in," Abe told a parliamentary committee, using the euphemism for sex slaves that is used by Japanese politicians. "I apologize here and now as prime minister."
Historians say as many as 200,000 women, mostly from the Korean peninsula and China, served in Japanese military brothels throughout Asia in the 1930s and '40s. Many victims say they were kidnapped and forced into sexual slavery by Japanese troops.
Japan plans to formally reaffirm to South Korea during Saturday's talks that it stands by the 1993 apology, a Japanese diplomat said Friday on condition of anonymity because of ongoing diplomacy.
That move meets the minimum South Korean demand over the issue and could put the dispute to rest temporarily. But if Seoul presses Tokyo hard to clearly acknowledge coercion, tensions could rise.
North Korea is also likely to be a key issue in Saturday's talks, as South Korea has been critical of Japan for putting a bilateral problem with North Korea _ the North's abduction of Japanese citizens in the 1970s and '80s _ ahead of the shared goal of resolving the nuclear problem.
Japan, citing the abduction issue, is refusing to take part in providing aid to North Korea as compensation for the closing and disabling of its nuclear program under a landmark six-nation deal.
South Korea is expected to ask Japan to reconsider that stance.
Follow-up negotiations on the Feb. 13 nuclear deal are stalled amid a dispute over North Korean money held in a Macau bank blacklisted by the U.S. The participants in the nuclear talks are China, Japan, the two Koreas, Russia and the United States.
Relations between South Korea and Japan have often been frayed by territorial and historical disputes largely associated with Japan's 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean peninsula. Korea was later divided into the capitalist South and the communist North.
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