Pair of bronze statues shows a male figure kneeling and bowing before a ‘comfort woman’ in South Korea

Japan has reacted angrily to statues in South Korea that appear to depict the Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe, prostrating himself before a young woman who represents tens of thousands of wartime sex slaves.

The pair of bronze statues, set up in a privately run botanical garden in the eastern county of Pyeongchang, shows a male figure kneeling and bowing before a seated “comfort woman” – a euphemism for the tens of thousands of girls and women, mostly from the Korean peninsula, who were forced to work in frontline brothels run by the Japanese military before and during the second world war.

Related: 'Comfort women' crisis: campaign over wartime sexual slavery hit by financial scandal