Park stresses cure of historical scars left by Japan

Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe smiles as he delivers a speech at the 50th anniversary ceremony for the normalizing of relations between Japan and South Korea, hosted by the South Korean embassy in Tokyo June 22, 2015. [Photo/Agencies]

The Abe government has refused to officially apologize and compensate for Imperial Japan's wartime atrocities on the Korean Peninsula during the 1910-45 colonial period.

Abe described comfort women, or Korean women forced into sex slavery for Japanese military brothels during the World War II, as human trafficking by private agents, seeking to shun responsibility of the government.

The Abe cabinet has also been seeking to list 23 facilities of Japan's Meiji Industrial Revolution, to some of which tens of thousands of Koreans were mobilized for forced labor, as UNESCO World Heritage sites.

Japan had yet to provide detailed resolutions over the issues on sex slaves and slave laborers, making no change in its stance that those issues were resolved through the 1965 treaty that normalized the bilateral diplomatic ties.

Park's comments indicated her call for Japan's concrete measures to cure the historical scars left in the minds and hearts of the victims.

Citing a South Korean old proverb of "Nothing can be done without trust," Park called for Japan to take necessary measures together to deepen trust further between the two countries.