Asian Women's Fund
The Asian Women's Fund (財団法人女性のためのアジア平和国民基金, zaidan hojin josei-no tame no Ajia heiwa kokumin kikin), also abbreviated to アジア女性基金 in Japanese, was a fund set up by the Japanese government in 1994 to distribute monetary compensation to comfort women in South Korea, the Philippines, Taiwan, the Netherlands, and Indonesia.[2][3] Each survivor was provided with a signed apology from the prime minister, stating "As Prime Minister of Japan, I thus extend anew my most sincere apologies and remorse to all the women who underwent immeasurable and painful experiences and suffered incurable physical and psychological wounds as comfort women.As expressed by Murayama at a press conference on July 18, 1995[6] the government's goal was defined as following: The fund was formally established on June 19, 1995.The Chinese and Japanese governments were unable to reach any agreement, and Japan had no regular diplomatic relations with North Korea.[4][9][12] The conservative Yomiuri newspaper said in an editorial in 2011 "No written material supporting the claim that government and military authorities were involved in the forcible and systematic recruitment of comfort women has been discovered", and that it regarded the fund as a failure based on a misunderstanding of history.