Japan's ambassador to Seoul remains in Tokyo since he was recalled in early January in protest over the erection of a statue symbolizing the wartime "comfort women" in front of the Japanese consulate general in Busan in late December, as Tokyo says that South Korea is violating a diplomatic agreement that it struck with Japan in 2015. The Japanese and South Korean governments must strive to end this anomaly in bilateral ties. They should realize that the two countries cannot afford to let relations remain frigid given North Korea's continuing provocations, including Sunday's ballistic missile test.

The Busan statue was erected by a group of South Korean citizens opposed to the agreement that Tokyo and Seoul announced in December 2015 to settle the dispute over Korean women forced into frontline brothels for the Japanese military before and during World War II. In the agreement to resolve the dispute "finally and irreversibly," Tokyo acknowledged the involvement of the Japanese military in running the brothels and quoted Prime Minister Shinzo Abe as expressing his deep-felt apologies to all those who suffered as comfort women, and agreed to finance a ¥1 billion fund to be set up by the South Korean government to support surviving victims.

The South Korean government, meanwhile, declared that it will "make an effort to appropriately resolve" the issue of a statue symbolizing the women that was erected in 2011 by a citizens' group in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul. Japan had called for its removal, saying such statues damage the dignity of its diplomatic establishments — a reference to the Vienna convention on diplomatic relations, which require signatory countries to maintain the dignity of the diplomatic establishments of other nations.