South Korea, Japan to hold rare official talks on 'comfort women'

Senior South Korean and Japanese officials will meet this week to discuss Japan's wartime sexual enslavement of Korean women, South Korea's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Sunday. Ties between the two close US allies have long been poisoned by what South Korea consider Japan's failure to atone for its wartime past, including the issue of so-called comfort women, forced to work in Japanese brothels.
The talks on Wednesday will be held a week or so before US President Barack Obama will visit both countries. Obama brought together the leaders of the East Asian neighbours last month in the Netherlands.