Japan has again rejected South Korea's proposal to hold talks to address the issue of compensating Korean women who were forced to serve as wartime sex slaves for the Japanese Army during the colonial period.

At a foreign affairs committee meeting at the Diet’s House of Representatives on Wednesday, Japanese Foreign Minister Koichiro Gemba reiterated Tokyo’s previous stance that the compensation issue was fully resolved through a 1965 bilateral agreement.

When asked about how he as a person feels about the elderly ladies, Gemba said his heart aches, but added that whether to accept Seoul's proposal is not a matter of his feelings but rather a matter of following an agreement between the two countries.

During the meeting, the leader of Japan's Social Democratic Party, Ryoichi Hattori, called on the Tokyo government to seize the opportunity to apologize to the Korean victims next Wednesday when they will hold their one thousandth weekly protest outside the Japanese Embassy in Seoul.