Seoul’s Foreign Ministry on Thursday renewed its call for Tokyo to engage in official talks over issues concerning former “comfort women” forced into sexual slavery during World War II.

It also reiterated that the government cannot ask for the removal of the “Peace Statue” a civic group established near the Japanese Embassy in Seoul on Wednesday. The monument is to highlight demands for Japan’s apology and adequate compensation for the wartime victims.

The Tokyo government has officially requested that Seoul seek ways to remove the statue, which has emerged as a thorny issue ahead of President Lee Myung-bak’s visit to Japan for summit talks with Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda on Sunday.

“We have been waiting with patience for an official reply from Japan for our proposal for talks aimed at resolving issues concerning former comfort women for the last three months,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Cho Byung-jae said in a press briefing.

“I once again reaffirm that our government’s basic position is that these issues are concerning women’s human rights and humanitarianism that cannot be addressed under a 1965 South Korea-Japan pact concerning the right of claims.”

Cho also stressed that if Japan fails to respond to the talks, the Seoul government will inevitably take a next step, which is to try to address the issues through a mediation process.

“It is not like we already have the timeline for the establishment of a mediation procedure. We are reviewing a variety of things regarding the time and what methods we will use for the possible mediation process,” he said.

The bilateral pact was aimed at settling all financial issues from Japan’s colonization of the Korean Peninsula. The pact was signed although the two sides interpreted it differently.

Tokyo argues that all issues including those concerning comfort women were addressed under it, while Seoul argues that comfort women issues are separate and should be dealt with from the humanitarian standpoint.

The controversial statue was erected on Wednesday when some former comfort women and their supporters held their 1,000th Wednesday Protest in front of the Japanese Embassy.

“Instead of demanding the removal of the monument, the Japanese government should seriously consider why the victims have staged the Wednesday Protest for the past two decades and if there are ways to restore their honor,” Cho said.

In a separate press conference, Shinsuke Sugiyama, director-general of the Japanese Foreign Ministry’s Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau, said that Japan has never said that it will not respond to calls for talks.

“The Japanese government has never said that it will not respond to bilateral talks (over the comfort women issues). We just delivered our stance on legal responses (to Seoul) and they can win the international society’s understanding,” he said during the conference at the Japanese Embassy.

He visited Seoul this week to coordinate over President Lee’s plan to visit Japan and discuss North Korean issues with Seoul officials.

Seoul proposed the bilateral talks on Sept. 15 based on the Seoul-Tokyo pact. A provision under the pact stipulates that a bilateral conflict be addressed through diplomatic channels and that should the resolution fail, the issue be referred to a mediation committee.

The move came after the Constitutional Court in Seoul ruled on Aug. 30 that it is a violation of victims’ human rights that the government does not proactively engage in efforts to resolve the issues surrounding them.

Government officials said that the comfort women issue will be one of the agenda items when President Lee holds summit talks with the Japanese prime minister in Kyoto on Sunday. The summit talks were sought as part of their “shuttle diplomacy.”

By Song Sang-ho (sshluck@heraldcorp.com)