South Korea and Japan appear to be in a war of nerves ahead of their high-stakes negotiations over the thorny issue of Japan’s wartime sexual slavery as they seek to gain the upper hand in the upcoming consultations.

A Seoul official on Friday said it was Tokyo that should first propose solutions to the issue involving Korean victims of the colonial-era atrocity. His remarks came a day after Koichi Hagiuda, Tokyo’s deputy chief cabinet secretary, said in an interview “the ball is in Seoul’s court.” 

“Japan should put forward solutions that could be understood and accepted by Korean victims, from the perspective that the one who created the problem should solve the problem,” a Seoul official told media, declining to be named.

At the first-ever summit between President Park Geun-hye and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Seoul on Monday, they agreed to accelerate their negotiations over the issue. But they did not set a deadline for the settlement of the issue. 

During his meeting Wednesday with Sadakazu Tanigaki, the secretary-general of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, Abe reportedly said it would be difficult to settle the issue if the two sides fix a deadline for the resolution. Observers said his remarks underscored the difficulty in reaching a solution in the coming months.

Since April 2014, the two sides have held nine rounds of director-general-level talks on the issue of the “comfort women,” as the wartime sex slaves are euphemistically known. But no significant progress has yet been reported.

Tokyo has long argued that the issue was already settled under a 1965 treaty normalizing bilateral ties. Seoul claims the “humanitarian” issue should be separate from the treaty, and the issue was not on the agenda for the negotiations over the treaty.

After the bilateral summit, a flurry of Japanese news reports on possible solutions came out.

One possible solution in the reports was a humanitarian financial support similar to the botched Asian Women’s Fund. Japan set up the fund in 1995 to offer “atonement money” to Asian victims, many of whom were Korean.

Financed by civilian donations, the fund was intended to show that Japan was taking “moral responsibility” for the past misdeed. But it was dissolved as the victims called for “legal” reparations and apologies, not just financial compensation.

Seoul and Tokyo refuse to divulge the contents of their hitherto working-level negotiations over the issue. Observers presume that they have been struggling to gain more concessions from each other based on the “Sasae proposal.”

During his visit to Seoul in March 2012, then Japanese Vice Foreign Minister Kenichiro Sasae made a three-point proposal.

The three points were a direct apology by the Japanese prime minister, the Seoul-based Japanese ambassador’s delivery of a letter of apology to the victims and a compensation fund from the Tokyo government.

The negotiations failed as Seoul demanded Japan recognize its “state responsibility” for the sexual slavery.

Currently the number of known surviving Korean victims stands at 47. Their average age is 89.2 years old.

By Song Sang-ho (sshluck@heraldcorp.com)