Japanese civic groups said Tuesday that a South Korea-Japan deal on Tokyo's wartime sex slavery is insufficient to heal the pains of Korean victims, raising doubts about whether Japan has sincerely apologized for its atrocity.

South Korea and Japan reached a rare deal Monday to resolve the issue of South Korean women coerced into sex slavery for Japanese soldiers during World War II.

The deal included Japan's apology for Korean victims and a 1 billion yen ($8.29 million) fund to be created with Japan's money, but it failed to specify Japan's legal responsibility for the issue.

Civic groups in Japan said that the agreement is a step forward, as their government admitted its responsibility for the matter for the first time. But it is disappointing that the deal was ambiguous on the Japanese government's specific role in forcing Korean women into sexual servitude, they said.

"It is meaningful that Japan recognized its accountability for the first time. But the deal never went beyond Japan's 1993 apology over the matter, known as the Kono Statement," Mina Watanabe, general secretary of the Women's Active Museum on War and Peace in Japan, told Yonhap News Agency.

In the 1993 statement, Japan acknowledged and apologized for its military's "involvement" in the wartime wrongdoings, but it did not state the Japanese government and military's leading roles in "coercing" Korean women into sexual servitude.

"It is questionable whether Japan had the sincerity to apologize for the issue, as it demands that the statue of a girl symbolizing such victims be removed from outside the Japanese Embassy in Seoul," she said. "If Japan really wants to heal their pains, it should have not made such a request."

Hisatomo Kobayashi, a senior official at the Truth-Seeking Network for Forced Mobilization in Japan, cast a similar view.

"The Seoul-Tokyo deal failed to clarify the fact that Japan and its military took the leading role in forcing women into sexual servitude," Kobayashi said. "I don't think Japan sincerely apologized to the victims, given that it did not clearly recognize this fact." (Yonhap)