South Korea's foreign minister said Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe missed a "golden opportunity" to rectify Japan's wartime past – and that the Japanese leader did so of "his own accord." While the prime minister offered "eternal condolences" for U.S. soldiers who perished while fighting Japan in the Pacific, he abstained from issuing an explicit apology to Asian victims of Japanese aggression.

South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se made his remarks on Friday, two days after Abe's address to the US Congress.