During an Oval Office meeting, U.S. President Donald Trump identified the wartime "comfort women" issue as a principal obstacle between South Korea and Japan. Trump characterized Japan as willing to move forward while saying South Korea remained focused on the wartime sexual slavery issue. "Comfort women" refers to Korean women and girls forced into sexual slavery by Japanese soldiers during World War II. A Statue of Peace erected in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul in 2011 intensified diplomatic tensions and remains despite Japanese demands for its removal. South Korean President Lee Jae-myung said many bilateral obstacles have since been removed.
Japan is a great ally of us. And I had a little bit of a hard time getting your two together because you're still thinking about Comfort Women, right? Comfort Women! That's all they wanted to talk about was Comfort Women. And I thought that was settled a few times over the decades.
Perhaps I'm wrong in saying it. Perhaps this isn't right, but the whole issue of the women, Comfort Women, very specifically. We had talked, and it was a very big problem for Korea. Not for Japan. Japan, they wanted to get they want to get on, but Korea was very stuck on that, you understand?
When I visited Japan and met with Prime Minister Ishiba, I realize many of the obstacles that existed between our two countries have now been removed.
That's true. We removed them during my term. There was an overlay, a little bit, but we removed many of those obstacles.
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