Japan and South Korea used separate responses to U.N. human rights investigators to restate sharply different positions on wartime sexual slavery, underscoring a persistent diplomatic rift even as the two U.S. allies have recently moved to stabilize ties.
In a statement posted Monday on a U.N. website, Japan defended its long-standing view that compensation and related matters were settled by past agreements and described recent South Korean court rulings ordering Tokyo to pay damages as violations of international law. South Korea, in its response, urged Japan to “squarely face up to our painful history,” saying Tokyo’s refusal to comply with court orders has denied survivors compensation.
The exchanges followed letters sent in July by a group of U.N. investigators to Japan, South Korea and four other governments — China, the Philippines, Indonesia, the Netherlands and East Timor — raising concerns about what the investigators described as failures to ensure victims’ access to truth, justice, remedy and reparations. The governments were given 60 days to respond; the U.N. website posted only the responses from Japan and South Korea on Monday.
The U.N. team asked Japan to address allegations that past investigations and reparations have been insufficient, that Tokyo has evaded state and legal responsibility, and that it had refused to comply with three South Korean court rulings handed down between 2021 and 2025 ordering compensation for Korean victims. Japan’s reply, issued by its permanent mission in Geneva, reiterated Tokyo’s position that compensation issues were resolved by the 1965 treaty normalizing relations and by a separate 2015 agreement intended to settle the matter.
Japan said the recent South Korean court decisions violated the principle of state immunity in lawsuits against foreign states and urged Seoul to "take appropriate measures to remedy its breaches of international law as a country," according to the statement. Tokyo has repeatedly rejected South Korean rulings that ordered the Japanese government and private companies to provide reparations, asserting such judgments conflict with sovereign immunity and the 1965 treaty.
South Korea’s response rejected that characterization, noting that the courts contend sovereign immunity does not shield foreign states from accountability for crimes against humanity or for wrongful acts committed on South Korean territory against its nationals. Seoul reiterated calls for Japan to confront historical responsibility and said survivors had been denied payment because Tokyo would not comply with the rulings.
Advocates and some legal experts in South Korea have urged the two governments to take the dispute to the International Court of Justice, and survivors such as Lee Yong-soo have backed such a referral. No joint action to bring the matter before the ICJ has been taken.
Historians estimate tens of thousands of women from across Asia, many from Korea, were forced into sexual slavery in military brothels during Japan’s wartime expansion. Japan has offered expressions of regret in the past and carried out a 1995 study of the practice, and a fund created from private contributions provided some compensation to victims in the Philippines, South Korea and Taiwan before that mechanism expired in 2007. The 2015 bilateral accord between Tokyo and Seoul aimed to resolve the issue at governmental level; at the time of that agreement 46 of the 239 women who had registered with the South Korean government as victims were still alive. That number has since dwindled to six.
The dispute over reparations and history has periodically strained Tokyo-Seoul relations for decades, complicating cooperation on regional security and economic matters. In recent months, however, the two countries have taken more visible steps to repair ties and to bolster trilateral coordination with the United States in response to shared challenges, including North Korea’s nuclear program. In August, South Korean President Lee Jae Myung met Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba in Tokyo before traveling to Washington for a summit with U.S. President Donald Trump, a sequence that analysts said reflected shifting diplomatic dynamics in the region.
The U.N. investigators’ inquiry remains broader than the exchanges posted Monday, and it covers multiple countries where survivors of wartime sexual slavery have sought truth and reparations. The responses from Tokyo and Seoul make clear that, even as they pursue cooperation on contemporary security issues, fundamental disagreements over history and legal responsibility persist.