SEOUL: The southern South Korean port of Busan said on Friday it would allow activists to place a statue symbolising victims of Japanese wartime sex slavery outside the city’s Japanese consulate.

The municipal authorities had previously removed the “comfort woman” statue, but changed track after Japan’s hawkish defence minister offered prayers at a controversial war shrine in Tokyo.

Tomomi Inada’s visit on Thursday to the Yasukuni Shrine, which honours millions of mostly Japanese war dead — but also senior military and political figures convicted of war crimes — swiftly drew flack from China and South Korea.

Activists had first placed their statue outside the consulate on Wednesday — marking their opposition to a South Korea-Japan agreement reached a year ago to finally resolve the comfort women issue. Under the accord, which both countries described as “final and irreversible”, Japan offered an apology and a one-billion yen ($8.3 million) payment to surviving Korean comfort women. Critics said the deal did not go far enough in holding Japan responsible for its wartime abuses.

The statue in Seoul — a bronze of a young, seated woman with a small bird on her shoulder — has proved an extremely potent and popular symbol.

Published in Dawn, December 31st, 2016