Beijing on Friday blasted Tokyo for trying to re-examine a 20-year-old investigation that led to Japan's 1993 apology over its sexual enslavement of women during World War II, urging Tokyo to resolve the issue "in a responsible attitude."   

China's foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying made the remarks a day after Japan's chief government spokesman Yoshihide Suga said his government is likely to review the accuracy of the investigation, a move widely viewed in South Korea as the first step to deny Japan's wartime sexual slavery.

The remarks by Suga immediately drew strong condemnation from South Korea. Historians say up to 200,000 women from Korea and other Asian nations, including China, were forced into sexual servitude at front-line Japanese brothels during World War II.

Those sex slaves were euphemistically called "comfort women."

"The forced recruitment of comfort women is a severe crime against humanity committed by the Japanese military during World War II," Hua said. "It has been proven by irrefutable evidences."   

"Any actions taken by Japan with the purpose of negating this crime and overturning the verdict of its history of wartime aggression will be met with firm opposition from the international community and people from victimized countries," Hua said.

In the 1993 statement, then Japanese cabinet secretary Yohei Kono publicly acknowledged that the Japanese military was involved in the "coercion" of those sex slaves and apologized.   

However, Japanese leaders have since often made remarks to the contrary, causing diplomatic friction between the two neighboring countries.

South Korea has pressed Japan to provide compensation and extend a formal apology to the victims, but Tokyo has refused to do so, saying the matter was settled by a 1965 treaty that normalized relations between the two countries.  

Time is running out for those aging victims in South Korea, with only 55 victims left. Their average age is 88. (Yonhap)