South Korean officials are planning of establishing a domestic fund to compensate Koreans who were enslaved by Japanese companies before the end of World War II.
This decision is a step in South Korea’s frantic efforts to repair relations with Tokyo that have soured in recent years over historical grievances.
The plan, revealed on Thursday, January 12, 2023 during a public hearing organized by Seoul’s Foreign Ministry, was met with fierce criticism by victims and their legal representatives, who have demanded that the compensations come from Japan.
Victims have also demanded the Japanese companies issue an apology over their ordeals.
Relations between Seoul and Tokyo have been tense since South Korea’s Supreme Court in 2018 upheld lower court verdicts and ordered Nippon Steel and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries to compensate Korean forced laborers.
The 2018 rulings ordered Nippon Steel and Mitsubishi to provide around 100 to 150 million won ($80,000 to $120,000) each to 15 plaintiffs, including both survivors and relatives of deceased victims.
The companies have refused to carry out the orders and the plaintiffs have responded by pursuing legal steps aimed at forcing the companies to sell off their local assets to provide compensation.
However, South Korean officials fear that the process would cause further rift between Seoul and Tokyo.
Ties between Seoul and Tokyo have become sour due to grievances related to Japan’s brutal rule of the Korean Peninsula from 1910 to 1945, when hundreds of thousands of Koreans were mobilized as forced laborers for Japanese companies or sex slaves at Tokyo’s wartime brothels.
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, has been willing to improve relations with Japan as they pursue stronger trilateral security cooperation with the United States in the face of the mounting North Korean nuclear threat.
During Thursday’s public hearing at the National Assembly, South Korean Foreign Ministry Official, Seo Min-jung announced that her government’s priority is to arrange the payments as quickly as possible, citing that many forced labor victims are already dead and most known survivors are in their nineties.
Seo disclosed that the payments could possibly be handled by the Seoul-based Foundation for Victims of Forced Mobilization by Imperial Japan.
Shim Kyu-sun, the foundation’s chair, remarked that the payments could be funded by South Korean firms that benefited from Japanese economic assistance when the countries normalized their ties in the 1960s, such as steel giant, POSCO.
Seo Min-jung noted that government officials have planned to meet the victims and their family members in person to explain the payment plans and seek their consent.
Japanese Companies’ Apology Impossible
The South Korean Official, Seo Min-jung iterated that it would be “impossible” to make the Japanese companies apologize on behalf of the broader forced labor issue, which has fueled mutual frustration between the countries for decades.
“It would be important that Japan sincerely maintains and inherits the poignant expressions of apology and remorse that it already expressed in the past. The Japanese companies have reduced much of their economic activity in South Korea and withdrawn (many of their) assets, so it’s not even clear whether a liquidation process would be enough to provide compensation to the plaintiffs.”
Seo Min-jung
Lim Jae-sung, a lawyer who represented the plaintiffs in the 2018 rulings, accused the government of pushing ahead with a settlement that excessively aligns with Japan’s position while ignoring the voices of victims.
“It seems that the South Korean government’s finalized plan is to use the money by South Korean companies like POSCO to allow the Foundation for Victims of Forced Mobilization by Imperial Japan to eliminate the forced labor victims’ rights to receivables.”
Lim Jae-sung
Lim iterated, “Japan doesn’t take any burden at all.”
Japan insists that all wartime compensation issues were settled under a 1965 treaty normalizing relations between the two nations that was accompanied by hundreds of millions of dollars in economic aid and loans from Japan to South Korea.
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