Japanese Ambassador to South Korea Yasumasa Nagamine met with Acting South Korean President Hwang Kyo-ahn on Thursday for the first time since he was recalled in January to protest the erection of a statue in Busan symbolizing the Korean women who were forced to work in wartime Japan’s military brothels.

Nagamine had sought a meeting with Hwang upon returning to his post in Seoul last month, but the South Korean government did not comply, citing a diplomatic protocol.

“I fully conveyed Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s feelings” to the acting president, Nagamine told reporters after the meeting in Seoul.

The comments likely indicate that he urged Seoul to implement the landmark 2015 bilateral agreement aimed at permanently resolving the protracted dispute over the “comfort women,” Japan’s euphemistic term for the female victims.

Hwang told Nagamine that he expects all parties concerned, including the South Korean and Japanese governments, to make efforts to develop bilateral relations in the face of difficulties, according to the South Korean government.

Tokyo claims the statue contravenes the bilateral agreement to “finally and irreversibly” resolve the comfort women issue.

Nagamine said he was given a chance to talk directly with the acting president after attending a meeting of ambassadors from the U.N. Security Council’s member countries, which was organized by Hwang.

The ambassador lso met with South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung Se on Tuesday and urged the South Korean government to remove both the statue in front of the Japanese Consulate General in Busan and the more famous one in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul, according to a source close to the matter.

Under the 2015 agreement, the Japanese government disbursed ¥1 billion ($8.9 million) last year to a South Korean fund to help the former comfort women and their families. For its part, South Korea specifically said it “acknowledges” Japan’s concerns about the comfort women statue in Seoul and will “strive to solve this issue in an appropriate manner.”

The statue in Busan, however, was installed after the agreement, in December last year.

The Busan statue appeared shortly after Defense Minister Tomomi Inada paid a visit to war-linked Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo upon her return from Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s historic visit to the sensitive USS Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

Japan’s neighbors and former foes say the shrine glorifies Japanese militarism.