SEOUL —

Former Japanese Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama said Wednesday that Japan had committed “indescribable wrongdoings” by forcing women from South Korea and elsewhere to serve as sex slaves to its wartime troops.

Murayama, who as prime minister issued an apology in 1995 for Japan’s wartime aggression, said it was time for Tokyo to finally resolve the issue of the so-called “comfort women” who were drafted into military brothels.

“Indescribable wrongdoings were committed, in which these women’s dignity was forfeited. Japan must solve it,” he said in a speech inside the parliament building in Seoul.

Murayama, now 89, had met Tuesday with three aged South Korean comfort women, after which he said he realized “that this issue must be settled expeditiously”.

“Please stay healthy,” he told the women as he clasped their hands at an exhibition of art works by comfort women being held in the South Korean parliament complex in Seoul.

One of the three women, Kang Ul-Chul, told Murayama through an interpreter that the Japanese government should apologize properly to the former sex slaves and provide compensation.

They also presented him with one of the artworks, titled “Flower destroyed unbloomed”.

He also criticized some Japanese politicians and opinion-makers for making “nonsensical remarks” about the former sex slaves and stressed that the vast majority of Japanese people understood the wrong that had been committed.

Katsuto Momii, the new head of Japan’s national broadcaster NHK, angered Seoul recently by stating that wartime sex slavery was common to any country at war.

Japan’s 1910-45 colonial rule over the Korean peninsula remains a hugely emotive issue in South Korea, which believes Japan has failed to live up to the spirit of the 1995 apology and not properly atoned for its past aggression.

Relations hit a new low in December when the current prime minister, Shinzo Abe, visited a controversial war shrine which commemorates around 2.5 million Japanese war dead including several high-level war criminals.

Murayama arrived on Tuesday for a three-day visit at the invitation of an opposition party.

He reportedly requested a meeting with President Park Geun-Hye but was turned down on account of her “busy schedule”.

Park has made it clear she will not hold a summit with Abe until the Japanese leader takes steps to address South Korea’s historical grievances.

Source : JapanToday

I don't understand why would President Park refuses to see him?

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