South Korea urged Japan on Sunday to take concrete steps to resolve the issue of Korean women who were forced into sexual slavery for Japanese soldiers during World War II.
  

Foreign Ministry spokesman Noh Kwang-il made the call in a statement marking four years since the Constitutional Court deemed the government's lack of action over the dispute unconstitutional.
  

"As we stressed in the Aug. 15 Liberation Day address, the Japanese government must show a more enthusiastic attitude to swiftly resolve this issue," Noh said.
  

Citing Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's Aug. 14 statement, which marked the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II, the spokesman said "sincere actions" to resolve issues stemming from the two countries' shared history will demonstrate Japan's will to uphold the historical perceptions of past administrations.
  

In the statement, Abe stopped short of offering his own apology for Japan's wartime atrocities, saying simply that the position "articulated by the previous Cabinets will remain unshakable into the future."
  

He was apparently referring to the 1993 Kono Statement and 1995 Murayama Statement, in which the Japanese government apologized for the suffering it caused to other nations during the war and acknowledged the military's involvement in forcing Korean and other Asian women to work in front-line military brothels.
  

Historians say more than 200,000 women, mostly from Korea, fell victim to the Imperial Japanese Army as Korea was under Japanese colonial rule from 1910-45.
  

South Korea has demanded Japan acknowledge state responsibility for the crime and offer proper compensation to the 47 surviving South Korean victims.
  

Japan has claimed the issue was settled under a 1965 treaty that normalized bilateral ties.
  

The two countries' foreign ministries have held eight rounds of talks since April 2014 in an effort to settle the dispute. (Yonhap)