Japan’s national interests could be eventually undermined unless it heeds calls for resolving a long-standing issue of wartime sex slaves that continues to fray Tokyo’s ties with its neighbors, a South Korean scholar warned Tuesday.

Seok Tong-youn, secretary-general of the Seoul-based Northeast Asian History Foundation, also blasted some right-wing nationalists in Japan for trying to obliterate the Japanese military’s system of sexual slavery during World War II, denouncing the move as “nonsense.”

Historians say up to 200,000 women, mostly Koreans, were coerced into sexual servitude at front-line Japanese military brothels during the war when the Korean Peninsula was a Japanese colony. Those sex slaves were euphemistically described by the Japanese military as “comfort women.”

“The bottom line of Japan’s wartime sex slavery is that Japan systematically mobilized women to perform during the war and the human rights of many women were abused,” Seok said in his article, which was also published in the Chinese language by a Hong Kong-based newspaper, Ta Kung Pao, on Friday.

“If the Japanese government of Shinzo Abe continues to take steps toward the wrong path and cause friction with neighboring countries, it will eventually undermine Japan’s own national interests,” Seok said.

Japan has yet to atone properly for its wartime sexual slavery and has not paid direct compensation to any of the victims.

Earlier this month, Japan’s foreign ministry asked an American publisher to change references of the victims of wartime sex slavery, in a fresh bid to whitewash Japan’s record of wartime atrocities abroad.

South Korea has pressed Japan to address long-running grievances by the victims of wartime sex slavery by extending a formal apology and compensating them. But Japan has refused to do so, saying the matter was settled by a 1965 treaty that normalized relations between the two countries.

Little progress was reported in this week’s new round of talks between Seoul and Tokyo over wartime sex slavery. (Yonhap)