South Korean officials are considering creating a domestic fund to compensate Koreans who were enslaved by Japanese companies before the end of World War II, as they desperately try to repair relations with Tokyo that have deteriorated in recent years over historical grievances.
The plan, revealed during a public hearing organized by Seoul’s Foreign Ministry on Thursday (Jan 12), was met with fierce criticism by victims and their legal representatives, who have demanded that the reparations come from Japan
Relations between Seoul and Tokyo have been strained since South Korea’s Supreme Court in 2018 upheld lower court verdicts and ordered Nippon Steel and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries to compensate Korean forced labourers.
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, a process South Korean officials fear would cause further rupture between Seoul and Tokyo. Victims have also demanded the Japanese companies issue an apology over their ordeals.
Ties between the US Asian allies 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 mobilised as forced laborers for Japanese companies or sex slaves at Tokyo’s wartime brothels.
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 Washington in the face of the growing North Korean nuclear threat.
He met with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in Cambodia in November in the first bilateral summit between the countries in three years, where they expressed commitment to swiftly resolve “pending” bilateral issues, which clearly referred to the forced labor dispute
During Thursday’s public hearing at the National Assembly, South Korean Foreign Ministry official Seo Min-jung said her government’s priority is to arrange the payments as quickly as possible, noting that many forced labor victims are already dead and most known survivors are in their 90s.