Japan preparing for ‘comfort women’ talks

TOKYO: Japan’s top diplomat said Friday that he was prepared to “work hard” to settle a bitter row with South Korea over a Japanese wartime brothel system, a day after Prime Minister Shinzo Abe ordered him to visit the country to seek a breakthrough.

“I’m ready to be improvisational and work hard over the Japan-South Korea relationship and the comfort women issue,” Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida told reporters, using a euphemism for women systematically forced to have sex with Japanese soldiers during World War II.