Comfort women
Japan's relations with South Korea have improved somewhat during Abe's third term, in the aftermath of Abe's war anniversary statement. Abe and Korea's President Park Geun-hye held their first bilateral meeting in November 2015, where they both agreed to resolve the issue of so-called "Comfort women" which Park described as the biggest obstacle to closer ties. In late December 2015, foreign ministers Fumio Kishida and Yun Byung-se announced in Seoul that a deal had been reached to resolve the "comfort women" issue, in which Japan agreed to pay 1  billion yen into a fund to support the 46 surviving victims, and issued a statement that contained Abe's "most sincere apologies and remorse". Abe later telephoned Park to issue the apology. In return, the South Korean government agreed to consider the matter "finally and irreversibly resolved" and work to remove a statue from in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul. Both sides agreed to refrain from criticizing each other over the issue in the future. President Park stated that the agreement would be a "new starting point" for relations between the two countries, although both leaders received some domestic criticism: Abe for issuing the apology, Park for accepting the deal.