South Korea on Saturday reacted to a court order for Japan to compensate former "comfort women" over their treatment in Japanese military brothels by vowing to seek an "amicable solution" and "make every effort to continue constructive and future-oriented cooperation" with its neighbor.
The South Korean Foreign Ministry in a statement acknowledged that a 2015 bilateral agreement on settling the comfort women issue was an official one, and thus South Korea "has a policy not to make any additional claims against Japan at the government level."
But it said Seoul has neither the right nor the authority to prevent the victims themselves from raising concerns, adding that "the real problem cannot be solved only by agreements between the governments that do not reflect the intentions of the victims."