which are currently under Japanese rule. On the other hand, South Korea does not have territorial disputes with China and does not see it as a military threat. From a strategic point of view, South Korea is actually looking to improve relations with China because it is a powerful economic ally and one of the best sources of leverage South Korea could get over North Korea. Japan thinks that South Korea is prioritizing its relationship with China over its relationship with Japan, which frustrates Japan because it wants to enlist the help of East Asian democracies like South Korea in balancing China. In 2015, relations between the two nations reached a high point when South Korea and Japan addressed the issue of comfort women, or sex slaves used by the Japanese military during World War II. Fumio Kishida, the Japanese Foreign Minister, pledged that the Japanese government would donate 1 billion yen (US$8.3 million, 2015) to help pay for the care of the surviving former sex slaves. Furthermore, Japanese Prime Minister, Shinzō Abe, made public apologies to the "women who underwent immeasurable and painful experiences and suffered incurable physical and psychological wounds as comfort women". The agreement was firstly welcomed by the majority of the former comfort women (36 out of 47 existed former comfort women at that time) and the payment was received by them. However, Moon Jae-in utilized the criticism against the agreement for his presidential election supported by an activist group, the Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan, which criticized the agreement and persuaded the women to deny the payment. Moon and the activists argued that the former South Korean president, Park Geun-hye, without any communication with the alive "comfort women", hailed this deal as a sign of positive progression in Japanese and South Korean relations. At the time of this high point most of Japan's cabinet members visited the Yasukuni shrine, causing confusion in Korea about Japan's sincerity. In 2019 Japan imposed controls on the export of semiconductor materials, restricting export to South Korea and removing the country from its "preferred trading nations" list. Experts have said the controls may be retaliation after South Korean courts ruled that Japanese companies pay restitution for Korean forced laborers during World War II. See also Foreign relations of Japan Foreign relations of North Korea Japan–North Korea relations Foreign relations of South Korea Japan–South