of Foreign Affairs Press Conference on: Visit of Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto to the People's Republic of China). Letter from Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to the former comfort women: October 18, 2013: Prime Minister Shinzō Abe said: "Japan inflicted tremendous damage and suffering on people in many countries, especially in Asia. The Abe Cabinet will take the same stance as that of past Cabinets." Controversy Demands for an apology and compensation have been a recurring topic in Korean, Taiwanese, and Chinese politics. Western nations are also demanding long-overdue actions from the Japanese government, most notably through the United States House of Representatives House Resolution 121 voted in 2007. Criticisms regarding the degree and formality of apology, issued as a statement or delivered person-to-person to the country addressed, and the perception by some that some apologies are later retracted or contradicted by statements or actions of Japan, among others. In October 2006, Prime Minister Shinzō Abe's apology was followed on the same day by a group of 80 Japanese lawmakers' visit to the Yasukuni Shrine which enshrines more than 1,000 convicted war criminals. Two years after the apology, Shinzo Abe also denied that the Imperial Japanese military had forced comfort women into sexual slavery during World War II. He also cast doubt on Murayama apology by saying, "The Abe Cabinet is not necessarily keeping to it" and by questioning the definition used in the apology by saying, "There is no definitive answer either in academia or in the international community on what constitutes aggression. Things that happen between countries appear different depending on which side you're looking from." As of 2010, 24% of South Koreans still believe that Japan has never apologized for its colonial rule, while another 58% believe Japan has not apologized sufficiently. Some in the Japanese government have expressed exasperation at what level of apology is enough. During an impending visit in 1990 to Japan by South Korean president Roh Tae Woo Japanese cabinet secretary Ozawa Ichiro reportedly said, "it is because we have reflected on the past that we cooperate with [South] Korea economically. Is it really necessary to grovel on our hands and knees and prostrate ourselves any more than we already have?" In 2013, some of the right-wing population of Japan accused South Korea of hypocrisy, because Japan had apologized and provided compensation for the sexual slavery it perpetrated during World War II yet South