\n Japan recalled its ambassador to South Korea Friday to protest the placing of a statue symbolising victims of Japanese wartime sex slavery outside its consulate in the city of Busan last month.\n<\/p>\n
\n In a move likely to reignite the decades-old feud over the so-called \"comfort women\", Chief government spokesman Yoshihide Suga also announced that high-level economic discussions would be postponed.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"Japan and South Korea are neighbours,\" Suga said. \"It's a very important country. It's extremely regrettable we had to take this action.\"\n<\/p>\n
\n \"We have repeatedly and strongly requested to the Korean side to take appropriate action to solve this problem,\" he added.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"But at this moment, the situation hasn't improved. That's why we informed them of these actions.\"\n<\/p>\n
\n The statue -- a copy of one that sits across the road from the Japanese embassy in Seoul -- was initially removed after being set up by South Korean activists in the southern port city on Wednesday last week.\n<\/p>\n
\n But local authorities changed tack and did not stop the activists from putting it back after Japan's hawkish defence minister Tomomi Inada offered prayers at a controversial war shrine in Tokyo last week.\n<\/p>\n
\n Inada's visit last Thursday to the Yasukuni Shrine, which honours millions of mostly Japanese war dead -- but also senior military and political figures convicted of war crimes -- drew harsh criticism in South Korea as well as China.\n<\/p>\n
\n - 'Very regrettable' -\n<\/p>\n
\n Besides the recall of ambassador Yasumasa Nagamine, Suga also said Japan is ordering home its consul-general in Busan and suspending discussions over a Japan-South Korea currency swap.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"The Japanese government will continue to strongly urge the South Korean government as well as municipalities concerned to quickly remove the statue of the girl,\" Suga said.\n<\/p>\n
\n Japan's decision was described as \"very regrettable\" by South Korean Foreign Ministry Spokesman Cho June-Hyuck.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"Even if there exist difficult issues, the government emphasises again that it will continue developing South Korea-Japan relations based on trust between the two governments.\"\n<\/p>\n
\n Activists had first placed the new statue outside the consulate to mark their opposition to a South Korea-Japan agreement reached a year ago to finally resolve the \"comfort women\" issue.\n<\/p>\n
\n Under that accord, which both countries described as \"final and irreversible,\" Japan offered an apology and a one-billion yen ($8.6 million) payment to surviving Korean comfort women.\n<\/p>\n
\n But critics said the deal did not go far enough in holding Japan responsible for its wartime abuses.\n<\/p>\n
\n The statue in Seoul -- a bronze of a young, seated woman with a small bird on her shoulder -- has proved an extremely potent and popular symbol.\n<\/p>\n
\n Japan says it should have been removed after the comfort-women accord was signed, but Seoul argued it had only agreed to look into the possibility of moving it.\n<\/p>\n
\n For the past year, activists have maintained a 24-hour vigil to prevent the statue being taken away.\n<\/p>\n
\n More than two dozen similar monuments have been erected around South Korea, and another dozen or so abroad in the United States, Canada and elsewhere.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Japan recalled its ambassador to South Korea Friday to protest the placing of a statue symbolising victims of Japanese wartime sex slavery outside its consulate in the city of Busan last month. In a move likely to reignite the decades-old feud over the so-called \"comfort women\", Chief government spokesman Yoshihide Suga also announced that high-level […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[553],"tags":[],"ji_location":[],"class_list":["post-31568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-feed"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n