Special to WorldTribune.com

South Korea and Japan have agreed to push for a resolution to a long-time dispute that weakens both nations’ critical alliance with the United States and has damaged ties between the two nations for decades.

Japan and South Korea are key U.S. allies in a joint geopolitical posture that counters expansionist communist China and its strategic client state, North Korea.

At a Nov. 2 summit in Seoul, South Korean President Park Geun-Hye and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe broke the ice by agreeing to work toward settling the World War II Korean “comfort women” controversy in which Korean women were forced to work in Japanese military brothels. Park had called the issue the “biggest stumbling block” in Seoul-Tokyo relations.

The summit at the presidential Blue House was the first ever one-on-one meeting between Park and Abe.

Both Koreas still bitterly resent Japan’s brutal colonial occupation that was ended by World War II.

The demarcation of Korea left the northern half under China’s and the Soviet Union’s sphere of influence. When the North invaded the South in 1950, UN allies led by the United States pushed back communist forces but, after China entered the war, settled for an uneasy truce still in place today.

South Korea had turned down all previous offers of meetings from Japan, saying Tokyo had not properly atoned for its wartime past and colonial rule over the Korean peninsula from 1910 to 1945.

“The two leaders agreed to speed up consultations to try to resolve the comfort women question as quickly as possible,” the Blue House said in a statement.

Abe told reporters that Seoul and Tokyo were obligated to “not leave obstacles for future generations.” The Japanese prime minister, however, stopped short of offering a new apology for Tokyo’s wartime past.

Park, who took office in February 2013, has made compensation for Korean comfort women one of her top priorities.

Japan has said the comfort women issue was settled in a 1965 normalization agreement, in which Tokyo paid $800 million in grants or loans to South Korea.

Both leaders at the Nov. 2 summit reaffirmed their commitment to cooperating on the North Korean nuclear issue.

On Nov. 1, Park and Abe participated in a trilateral summit with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang. The leaders pledged to work on improving trade and security ties between the three largest economies in Northeast Asia.

  agree to address unresolved ‘comfort women’ issue, Japan, Li Keqiang, Park Geun-Hye, S. Korea break the ice, Shinzo Abe, WorldTribune.com