Japan has decided to temporarily recall its ambassador to South Korea to protest against the erection of a new "comfort women" statue near its general consulate in South Korea's southern port city Busan, announced a top spokesman of the Japanese government on Friday.
Japan has also decided to recall its consul-general in Busan, halt currency swap talks and postpone high-level economic dialogue with South Korea, according to Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga.
The spokesman described the new statue as "extremely problematic" regarding to the "final and irreversible" agreement between the Park Geun-hye administration and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe-led cabinet reached on Dec.28, 2015 to fully settle the "comfort women" issue.
A handful of aged, surviving South Korean victims have opposed the agreement, saying Abe has yet to sincerely apologize for past atrocities and admit legal responsibility of the Japanese government for forcible recruitment of the teenage victims during the colonization.
The Korean Peninsula was colonized by the Imperial Japan from 1910 to 1945.
Last Wednesday, which marked the first anniversary of the agreement, South Korean activists put up the statue of a girl, which is dressed in Korean traditional costume and is sitting in a chair, without approval from the municipal government.
It was removed by police in the district of Busan, where the Japanese consulate is located, but it was put in place two days later as enraged South Koreans gave angry phone calls and left hostile messages to the district office.
A similar statue was first erected in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul in 2011.
