not state redress. No activities in China or North Korea were funded. The Chinese and Japanese governments were unable to reach any agreement, and Japan had no regular diplomatic relations with North Korea. On January 24, 2005, a press conference was held announcing that the fund's would wrap up in March 2007 after the Indonesian projects were completed. On March 6, 2007, a press conference was held and president of the fund Tomiichi Murayama announced that the fund would dissolve on March 31, 2007. Results Other 140 women received ₩31.5 million ($26,000) as support money from the Korean government with the proviso that women sign a pledge not to receive AWF money. Among the 109 applicants, 79 were judged to qualify as recipients of the Fund assistance by Netherland NGO. "A few women" including Jan Ruff O'Herne in an ongoing lawsuit rejected the Fund's offer. As of 2002 Japanese response Japan was, and still is, deeply divided over this issue. Some progressives believe that the Japanese leaders should continue to investigate the issue and offer a formal apology. Japanese right-wing conservatives objected to the fund on the basis that it was attempting to solve a "non-existent problem". 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. Some conservatives have gone so far as to eliminate any mention of comfort women from history books. Some Japanese perceive the comfort women system as a "necessary evil," an inevitable part of war. South Korean response One of the main criticisms stated that the AWF was a private fund; South Korea claimed that state redress was what was required, and that the fund was not state redress. However, in January 1997, seven Korean survivors accepted the AWF offer, causing an outrage among leaders and fellow survivors. Dutch response Seventy nine women accepted the AWF offer. Some even said that they preferred AWF money over state compensation because it represented "Japanese people who wanted to express their regret to war victims while the latter would be money that was forcibly generated from an unwilling government". Some women who filed the lawsuit rejected the AW offer. The first Dutch woman to come forward, Jan Ruff