The painful dispute over the so-called comfort women, which both sides declared settled in 2015, has returned to life.
SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea said on Wednesday that it would shut down a Japanese-funded foundation created to help Korean women who were forced to work in brothels for Japan’s military during World War II, essentially voiding a 2015 agreement between the countries that was supposed to put the painful issue to rest.
South Korea has not formally abandoned the agreement, which both governments at the time called a “final and irreversible” settlement of the decades-old dispute surrounding the former sex slaves, known euphemistically as comfort women. But the Reconciliation and Healing Foundation was in charge of implementing the deal, and by dismantling that organization, South Korea has effectively shelved the agreement.
The 2015 deal, pushed through by a president who has since been ousted, was immediately unpopular in South Korea. Tokyo has repeatedly accused Seoul of trying to sabotage it, and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe reacted angrily to the news on Wednesday.
“The agreement made three years ago was the final and irreversible resolution,” Mr. Abe said. “Japan, as a member of the international community, has honestly executed this pledge. If one country cannot keep an international pledge, a bilateral relationship cannot be built.”
Historians say at least tens of thousands of women, many of them Korean, were lured or coerced into sexual slavery for the Japanese Army during World War II. The issue remains one of the most intractable disputes stemming from Japan’s decades of colonial rule over Korea, from 1910 to the end of the war in 1945.
Under the 2015 agreement, Japan apologized to the women and expressed responsibility for their suffering, and it provided $8.8 million to establish the foundation in South Korea, meant to provide care for the surviving women in their old age. In return, South Korea promised not to criticize Japan over the issue again.
