President Donald Trump’s meeting with South Korean President Lee Jae-myung took an unexpected turn Monday when the U.S. leader decided to bring up the topic of forced prostitution.
The White House meeting spanned several geopolitical issues, including potential unification of South Korea and North Korea, economic partnerships between South Korea and the U.S., as well as South Korea’s political stability, which has been on shaky ground since former President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law in December.
But then Trump dropped a seemingly unrelated doozy into the afternoon conversation: Japan’s sex-based war crimes.
“The whole issue of the women. Comfort women,” Trump remarked, seated beside Lee. “Very specifically, we talked and that was a very big problem for Korea, not for Japan. Japan was, wanted to go, they want to get on. And—but Korea was very stuck on that, you understand.”
The term “comfort women” was a euphemism coined by the Japanese military to describe women or girls who were forced into sexual slavery by Japanese soldiers during World War II, according to the Association of Asian Studies. It is estimated that hundreds of thousands of women were victimized by Japan and forced into military sex slavery during the war, which amounted to the largest case of government-sponsored human trafficking in modern history. The continued use of the phrase “comfort women” has been roundly criticized for minimizing the harm and gravity of Japan’s actions.
The topic is still a heavily charged political issue for the two nations, especially as surviving victims seek formal recognition of the atrocities by Tokyo.
But as Trump attempts to push his numerous ties to child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein into the rearview, it’s no surprise that he doesn’t understand why South Korea would have a difficult time moving past the abuse. The president has, after all, been found liable for sexually abusing women in the past.
In 2015, Japan apologized to the South Korean victims and reached an agreement with the conservative leadership in South Korea at the time to give 1 billion yen—or $6.8 million—in reparations.
Regardless, Lee called the matter a “heartbreaking issue” for South Koreans last week, noting that the 2015 arrangement was “very difficult to accept” for many victims in the country, but that it was nonetheless “undesirable to overturn it.”
Trump: “The whole issue of the women. Comfort women. Very specifically. We talked and that was a very big problem for Korea, not for Japan. Japan was, wanted to go, they want to get on. But Korea was very stuck on that.” pic.twitter.com/a3fj4Metch
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 25, 2025
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