Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is planning to attend the Pyeongchang Olympics in South Korea next month, a government source said on Wednesday, after earlier reports he would skip the Games to protest at Seoul’s position on “comfort women”.
Abe told Japan’s Sankei newspaper in an exclusive interview conducted on Tuesday that he wanted to attend the Games partly to tell his South Korean counterpart that he cannot accept Seoul’s call for more steps to help “comfort women”, a euphemism for those forced to work in Japan’s wartime military brothels.
Under the 2015 deal, reached by Abe and South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s predecessor, Japan apologized to former “comfort women” and provided a 1 billion yen ($9 million) fund to help them. But South Korea said this month the agreement failed to meet victims’ needs, calling for more steps.
