Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte will not act on an objection by Japan to a new statue in Manila that commemorates the Filipino “comfort women” who worked in Japanese military brothels during World War Two, his spokesman said on Thursday. South Korea announced it has urged Japan to extend a fresh “voluntary, heart-felt apology” for the victims forced to work at Japanese military brothels before and during World War II. Previously, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s administration denied that imperial Japan ran a system of human trafficking and coerced prostitution, implying that comfort women were simply camp-following prostitutes.