The 11th round of such meeting to discuss the issue of comfort women, a euphemism² for Korean women forced to serve in Japan's military brothels during the devastating³ war, will be held in Tokyo on Dec. 15, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

 

The South Korean side will be led by Lee Sang-deok, director-general of the Northeast Asian affairs bureau of the foreign ministry, while the Japanese side will be headed by Kimihiro Ishikane, director-general of the Japanese foreign ministry's Asian and Oceanian affairs bureau.

 

The meeting will come after South Korean President Park Geun-hye and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe agreed last month to speed up talks about the issue. 

 

Park and Abe met in Seoul on Nov. 2 on the sidelines of the trilateral leadership meeting with Chinese Premier⁴ Li Keqiang that was held in Seoul the previous day for the first time in more than three years.

 

It was the first-ever one-on-one summit between Park and Abe as Park had refused to sit down with Abe for historical disputes especially about Japan's sex slavery of Korean women during its colonization⁵ of the Korean peninsula from 1910-45.

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