A new row has broken out between Tokyo and Seoul after a South Korean minister used the term “sex slaves” to describe women forced to work in military brothels during the second world war.
Japan said that use of the phrase by Chung Hyun-back, equalities minister, was “totally unacceptable” and lashed out again on Tuesday after Korea’s foreign minister raised the so-called comfort women issue in a speech at the United Nations.
The dispute highlights that Japan and South Korea — the US’s two most important allies in Asia — remain as far apart as ever on the historical facts of what happened to the women despite agreeing a “final and irreversible” settlement of the issue in December 2015.