The government has renewed its demand for bilateral discussion with Japan on compensating former comfort women who were forcibly conscripted during World War 2.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Cho Byung-je said that the chief of the ministry’s Northeast Asia Division I called over a Japanese diplomat to the office in Seoul Tuesday morning and delivered a diplomatic cable urging Japan to accept the offer for bilateral talks.

According to the spokesman, the additional measure was taken as a considerable amount of time has passed since the South proposed bilateral discussions on the matter, to which the Japanese government had not given an official response.