South Korea calls Japan to action on wartime past

By Jack Kim

SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea's foreign minister on Saturday urged Japan to settle disputes arising from its militaristic past to allow relations between the two countries to improve.

Song Min-soon's comments came after Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe angered South Koreans earlier this month when he said there was no evidence Japan's government or army had forced women, many of them Koreans, to serve as sex slaves for Japanese soldiers during World War Two.

"Like today's weather, there is turbulence (in the relationship between South Korea and Japan,)" Song was quoted by officials as telling his Japanese counterpart Taro Aso.

"The clouds above us and the fog ahead must be cleared, and it is a task for us, not the past generations that committed wrongs," Song said at the start of talks in the resort island of Cheju.

Abe has since repeated a previous apology by Tokyo over the so-called "comfort women", saying he stood by a 1993 government statement on the issue.

Aso reiterated Abe's apology and expression of sympathy to the women who had been forced into sexual slavery, Japanese and South Korean officials said after the meeting.

Aso said later that he, Song and Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing would hold three-way talks in Cheju on June 3, Japan's Kyodo news agency reported.

Japan's ties with both China and South Korea chilled under Abe's predecessor, Junichiro Koizumi, who made annual visits to the Yasukuni shrine in Tokyo where Japanese leaders convicted as war criminals by an Allied tribunal are honored along with war dead.

Abe has tried to improve relations, visiting both countries for leaders' summits after taking office in September.

Aso proposed the resumption of bilateral free trade talks with South Korea, which were suspended in 2004, and Song pledged a positive review once Seoul's trade talks with the United States conclude.

The two ministers also agreed on the early resumption of six-country talks on ending North Korea's nuclear weapons program, officials said.

(Additional reporting by Linda Sieg in Tokyo)