South Korea's ruling party chief on Wednesday demanded renegotiations with Japan on wartime sex slavery victims, saying the bilateral agreement reached in 2015 lacked sincere apology and repentance over wartime crime against humanities.
Democratic Party Chair Choo Mi-ae joined the so-called Wednesday Rally earlier in the day, saying the agreement between South Korea and Japan on the comfort women victims should be renegotiated as it was what shouldn't have been agreed upon.
Comfort women are a euphemism for Asian women who were forced into sex enslavement for Japanese military brothels before and during World War II.
The victims, mostly in their late 80s or older, and civic group activists have held the protest rally every Wednesday since January 1992 outside the Japanese embassy in Seoul, marking the world's longest-ever demonstration for a single purpose.
They have demanded sincere apology, repentance and compensation from the Japanese government. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has yet to sincerely apologize for the wartime crimes.
Under the Park Geun-hye government, South Korea and Japan reached the "final and irreversible" agreement on the victims in December 2015, triggering strong backlash from most of South Koreans.
The ruling party chief said it would be impossible for a country, which has never made any efforts to tell the truth of history, to reach any final and irreversible agreement.
Choo noted that what could be irreversible and final was for Japan to apologize for its past atrocities and recover the honor of the victims.
