Japan urges South Korea to drop wartime compensation demands

TOKYO (AP) — Japan's foreign minister accused South Korea on Monday of worsening already strained ties by making “illegal” demands for compensation for the sexual abuse of Korean women and use of forced laborers during World War II.

Toshimitsu Motegi, in a diplomatic policy speech in parliament, said a recent South Korean court ruling ordering Japan to compensate 12 South Korean women who were sexually abused in Japanese military brothels during the war was "an abnormal development absolutely unthinkable under international law and bilateral relations.”

“We strongly urge South Korea to correct the violation of international law as soon as possible” and restore healthy relations, Motegi said.

The Seoul Central District Court ruled on Jan. 8 that the Japanese government must give 100 million won ($91,360) to each of 12 elderly women who filed lawsuits in 2013 over their wartime suffering as “comfort women.”

They were among tens of thousands of women across Japanese-occupied Asia and the Pacific who were sent to front-line Japanese army brothels.

The ruling worsened tensions between the two countries, whose relations had already plunged to the lowest level in decades over earlier South Korean rulings on Japan's actions during its 1910-1945 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula.

South Korea's Supreme Court in 2018 ordered Japanese companies to provide reparations to some South Koreans who were forced to work in their factories during the war.

The dispute over forced labor escalated into a trade dispute and prompted South Korea to threaten to scrap a 2016 military intelligence-sharing agreement with Japan, a key component of their regional defense cooperation with the United States.

Japan has protested the court rulings, saying all wartime compensation...