President Park Geun-hye on Monday pressed Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to heal the pains of their shared history as they held crucial talks that could set the tone for bilateral relations in the coming years.
  

"I hope that today's summit could become sincere talks to heal painful history" and serve as "a precious chance to develop bilateral relations," Park said at the start of the talks at Cheong Wa Dae, South Korea's presidential office.
  

She also said that "trust is the most important thing in diplomacy."
  

Abe said he will make joint efforts with Park to build future-oriented bilateral relations.
 
 
They met for about 100 minutes, the presidential office said, without elaborating.
  

Park had so far shunned a bilateral meeting with Abe due to the lack of progress in resolving the issue of elderly Korean women who were forced to serve as sex slaves for Japan's World War II soldiers.
  

Seoul and Tokyo recently held a ninth round of working-level talks on the issue, though no major significant progress has been made yet.
  

The issue is likely to be high on the agenda of the summit talks.
  

Seoul-Tokyo relations remain badly frayed largely because of Japan's refusal to atone for its past wrongdoings stemming from its colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula from 1910-45. One of the key pending issues is a demand by former Korean sex slaves for an apology and compensation from Japan.
  

Japan has so far refused to comply with the demand, insisting that the "comfort women" were recruited by civilian profiteers and its wartime military-led government was not directly involved.
  

The issue has gained urgency in recent years as the victims are dying off. In 2007, more than 120 South Korean victims were alive, but the number has since dropped to 47, with their average age standing at nearly 90.
  

Historians estimate that more than 200,000 women, mostly Koreans, were sexually enslaved by Japanese troops during World War II. (Yonhap)