In January, Japan withdrew its ambassador to South Korea and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe denounced Seoul for not abiding by the 2015 bilateral agreement regarding the "comfort women" that was aimed at enabling both nations to overcome this shared trauma. It was "shared" in the sense that many Korean women were recruited into what was effectively a system of sexual slavery that makes some contemporary Japanese feel uncomfortable about a dark chapter in the nation's past — one that revisionists are intent on whitewashing.
The incident that sparked the current re-escalation of the row was the decision by local authorities in Busan to allow a civic group to erect another comfort woman statue near the Japanese consulate in that city. On the face of it, it doesn't appear that Seoul has violated the agreement, because the national government in this vibrant democracy did not actually condone or approve the installation. On what authority could it intervene?
More importantly, the South Korean government has ceased to lambaste Japan over the comfort women issue internationally, a major concession to Tokyo. But this has not mollified Abe, who has made it clear that removal of the statue in Seoul, and now the one in Busan, is a key component of the agreement.
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