Seoul/Tokyo, Jan 8 (IANS): Japan's top diplomats in South Korea will return home this week in protest of a new statue recently set up in Busan to commemorate Korean victims of Japan's wartime sex slavery, sources said on Sunday.

Japan's Ambassador Yasumasa Nagamine plans to leave for Tokyo on Monday morning, and the Consul General in Busan, Yasuhiro Morimoto, will also return on the same day, Yonhap News Agency reported.

Last week, Japan decided to temporarily call in its top diplomats in South Korea, in protest against the statue installed last month by a civic group in front of its Consulate General building in the port city of Busan.

Tokyo also announced a halt to the ongoing negotiations on a currency swap agreement between the two countries and the postponement of a high-level cooperation meeting.

Japan's wartime enslavement of women in front-line brothels has been a major source of a long-standing diplomatic rift between Seoul and Tokyo.

Historians estimate that up to 200,000 women, mostly from Korea, were forced into sexual slavery for Japanese troops during World War II.