Wartime documents show Japan's role in recruiting comfort women: Kyodo

Wartime documents show the Japanese government was involved in forcing Korean women to serve as sex slaves at Japan's military brothels during World War II, Kyodo News reported Friday.

The Japanese army asked that there be one so-called "comfort woman" for every 70 soldiers, Kyodo reported, citing the documents collected by the Cabinet Secretariat between April 2017 and March 2019.

The documents indicate that the military played an active role in "recruiting" women, Kanto Gakuin University professor Hirofumi Hayashi was quoted as saying in the report.

In 1993, then Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono acknowledged the military's involvement in obtaining the women, in many cases against their will, and apologized to the victims.

However, the issue remains a major source of friction between Seoul and Tokyo, along with disputes over the forced labor endured by South Koreans during the war and the sovereignty of the Dokdo Islets.

Many Korean women were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military before and during World War II. Some historians put the number as high as 200,000. Korea was under Japan's colonial rule from 1910 to 1945.

Last year, South Korea's Supreme Court ordered Japanese firms to compensate Korean victims of forced labor. In apparent retaliation Tokyo then restricted the exports of key materials to South Korean companies.

Dokdo ― which lies in the East Sea that separates the Korean Peninsula from Japan ― has long been a thorn in relations between the two countries. Seoul keeps a small police detachment on the islets, effectively controlling them. Still, Japan repeatedly claims sovereignty of the rocky outcroppings.