In what appears to be the first joint history study between South Korea and China, government-backed researchers from the two nations have agreed to launch a joint research on the Japanese military's sexual enslavement of women during World War II, according to Chinese state-run media on Tuesday. 
   
The agreement, signed by South Korea's foreign ministry-funded Northeast Asian History Foundation and China's Jilin Provincial Archives on Monday, calls for the researchers to "find the truth" of the dark history that still poisons relations between Japan and the two Asian neighbors, China's Xinhua news agency reported. 
   
Historians say up to 200,000 women and girls, mostly Koreans, were coerced into sexual servitude at front-line Japanese brothels when the Korean Peninsula was a Japanese colony. Those forced sex slaves, also including women from China and other Asian nations, were euphemistically described by the invading Japanese Imperial Army as "comfort women."
   
"The comfort women issue is human rights abuse," the report quoted the agreement as saying. 
   
Japan has yet to atone properly for its wartime sexual slavery and has not paid direct compensation to any of the victims. 
   
South Korea has pressed Japan to address long-running grievances by the victims of wartime sex slavery by extending a formal apology and compensating them. But Japan has refused to do so, saying the matter was settled by a 1965 treaty that normalized relations between the two countries.
   
Time is running out for those aging victims in South Korea, with only 50 remaining alive today. Their average age is 88. (Yonhap)