South Korea will soon propose forming an arbitration panel with Japan in what would be the latest diplomatic bid to resolve long-standing grievances regarding Korean women forced into sexual slavery by Japan during World War II, a Seoul official said Monday.

The subject of former wartime sex slaves, euphemistically called “comfort women,” is one of the most emotional and unresolved issues between South Korea and Japan, which occupied the Korean Peninsula as its colony from 1910 through 1945.

South Korea has pressed Japan to resolve the issue through apology and compensation for the aging Korean women on a humanitarian level, but Tokyo refuses to do so, saying it was already settled by a 1965 treaty that normalized relations between the two countries.

Under the treaty, South Korea can ask Japan to form an arbitration panel, but it remains uncertain whether Tokyo would accept the proposal.

“We are considering making the proposal as early as this month,” said a senior official at Seoul’s foreign ministry.

Once formed, the panel will consist of three members. Two will be appointed by South Korea and Japan each, while the remaining one will be picked through a consultation between the two nations.

As part of preparations to form the panel, the ministry is screening a pool of candidates for the members, the official said on the condition of anonymity.

Japan has acknowledged its wartime military used sex slaves but refuses to issue an apology or compensate the victims individually, citing the 1965 Korea-Japan Claims Settlement Agreement.

South Korean officials, however, have stressed that the issue cannot be regarded as fully resolved by the 1965 treaty because the wartime sex slavery was a “crime against humanity.”

The issue is becoming increasingly urgent as the surviving comfort women are elderly and may soon pass away. 

(Yonhap News)