Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe should address the thorny issue of wartime sex slavery when he holds summit talks with President Park Geun-hye next week, Japanese scholars said Wednesday.

South Korea has proposed the two leaders hold a separate bilateral meeting in Seoul next Monday following a trilateral summit with China.

Park and Abe have yet to meet one-on-one as bilateral ties have frayed over various historical and territorial disputes. If they meet next week, a key focus of public attention will be the issue of Korean "comfort women" who were forced into sexual slavery for Japanese soldiers during World War II.

Seoul demands Tokyo acknowledge state responsibility for the crime and offer an apology and compensation to the victims, while Tokyo insists all issues related to its 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula were settled under a 1965 treaty that normalized bilateral ties in return for an economic aid package from Japan.

Haruki Wada, emeritus professor of Tokyo University, called on Abe to clearly state his intention to resolve the issue during his meeting with Park.

"If Prime Minister Abe says, 'Let's work for a solution. Let's hold talks,' I think our foreign ministries will be able to find a solution as there have been various proposed solutions in the past," Wada said in a phone interview with Yonhap News Agency. "If Prime Minister Abe says so, Japanese public opinion may also change. The right wing may become angry, but I think others will react positively."

Tadashi Kimiya, a professor at Tokyo University, said he believes Abe should use his meeting with Park to explain why he raised the issue of wartime violations of women's human rights in his August address marking the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II.

"He should also talk about specific ways to resolve it," the professor said. "The comfort women issue requires an apology in the sense that it was a violation of women's human rights in wartime."

Kan Kimura, a professor at the Graduate School of International Cooperation Studies at Kobe University, pointed out the irony in Abe's repeated pledges to uphold the apologies of previous Japanese administrations without offering his own.

"The Japanese government's real wish is probably not to discuss the comfort women issue at all, but as it can't be left as it is forever, they should be thoroughly prepared," he said. (Yonhap)