With the South Korean government raising the issue of compensating Korean wartime sex slaves at the U.N. on Tuesday, Japanese media reported that Tokyo is maintaining its position that the issue has been settled.

Japanese media including the NHK report that South Korea called for government-level talks regarding compensation for the victims during a bilateral foreign ministerial meeting held early this month, but Japan expressed that it will not respond to the request.

Japan has claimed that compensation for comfort women was fully settled by a 1965 agreement. However, the South Korean government believes that the agreement was only about settling claims from the Japanese colonial occupation of the Korean Peninsula and not about compensation for victims of atrocious crimes, atomic air raids and those forced to move to Sakhalin, Russia during the colonial period.