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South Korean officials are considering creating a domestic fund to compensate Koreans enslaved by Japanese companies before the end of World War II, as they desperately try to mend relations with Tokyo, which have been strained in recent years by historical grievances.
The plan, which was revealed at a public meeting organized by Seoul’s Foreign Ministry, was met with fierce criticism by victims and legal representatives, who demanded that reparations come from Japan.
Relations between Seoul and Tokyo have been strained since South Korea’s Supreme Court in 2018 upheld a lower court ruling and ordered Nippon Steel and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries to compensate Korean forced laborers. The verdict ordered the company to provide about 100 to 150 million won ($108,000 to $161,000 Cdn) to each of the 15 plaintiffs, including survivors and relatives of the deceased victims.
The trial was interrupted several times by angry spectators. Some shouted “traitor” at Korea University politics professor Park Hong-kyu, who attended as a panelist, after he said it was unrealistic for Japan to apologize and participate in the fund.
A persistent WWII complaint
Relations between the two countries have long been complicated by 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 as sex slaves in Tokyo’s wartime brothels.
Japan insists that all issues of reparations in the war have been resolved under the 1965 agreement normalizing relations between the two countries accompanied by hundreds of millions of dollars in economic aid and loans to Seoul.
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, a conservative who took office in May, has been eager to improve ties with Japan as they pursue stronger trilateral security cooperation with the US in the face of growing North Korean nuclear threats. He met Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in November in Cambodia in the first bilateral summit between the countries in three years.
During Thursday’s public hearing in the National Assembly, South Korean Foreign Ministry official Seo Min-jung said her government’s priority was to arrange payments quickly, noting that many of the labor victims had died and that the best-known survivors were in their 90s.
He said it was “impossible” to make Japanese companies apologize on behalf of the wider issue of forced labor, which has fueled frustration between the two countries for decades.
“It is important that Japan earnestly preserves and inherits the expressions of apology and regret that have been expressed in the past,” Seo said.
The Supreme Court has yet to rule on the case
Seo said the payment was made possible by the Seoul-based Foundation for Victims of Forced Mobilization by Imperial Japan. Shim Kyu-sun, the foundation’s chairman, said the payments could be financed by South Korean companies that benefited from Japanese economic aid when the countries normalized relations in the 1960s, including steel giant POSCO.
“Japanese companies have reduced many of their economic activities in South Korea and are withdrawing [many of their] assets, it is unclear whether the liquidation process is sufficient to compensate the plaintiffs,” Seo said.
Nippon Steel and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries appealed again to the High Court after a lower court ordered them to sell their local assets to compensate the plaintiffs. The High Court has yet to make a decision on allowing the liquidation of the company’s assets to proceed.
Lim Jae-sung, a lawyer who represented the plaintiffs in the 2018 ruling, accused the government of moving forward with a settlement that aligns with Japan’s position while ignoring the victims.
“It seems that the South Korean government’s final plan is to use the money of South Korean companies like POSCO to allow the Foundation for Victims of Forced Mobilization by Imperial Japan to eliminate the rights of victims of forced labor for debt,” Lim said. “Japan is not taking any burden.”
Japan reacted angrily after the 2018 decision and then imposed export controls on chemicals vital to South Korea’s semiconductor industry in 2019.
Seoul accused Tokyo of arms trafficking and even threatened to end a military intelligence sharing agreement with Tokyo, but eventually backed down and kept the deal under pressure from the administration of US president Donald Trump.
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