Opposition lawmakers slam proposed compensation plan for forced labor victims by gov't

By Kim Na-young

SEOUL, Jan. 12 (Yonhap) -- Opposition lawmakers on Thursday demanded the government withdraw a reported plan to compensate victims of Japan's wartime forced labor with money raised from third parties, rather than Japanese firms, saying the proposal is "humiliating."

The government of President Yoon Suk Yeol is reportedly considering creating a fund from donations of South Korean companies to compensate victims without the participation and formal apologies of the accused Japanese firms, such as Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. and Nippon Steel Corp.

The move is aimed at restoring long-frayed relations with Japan.

Relations between the two countries have frayed badly since Japan imposed export curbs against the South in 2019 in retaliation against South Korean Supreme Court rulings that Japanese firms should pay compensation to forced labor victims.

Japan has claimed all reparation issues stemming from its 1910-45 colonial occupation of the Korean Peninsula were settled under a 1965 treaty that normalized relations between the two countries and urged the South to come up with acceptable solutions.

On Thursday, about 30 lawmakers from the main opposition Democratic Party (DP) and the minor progressive Justice Party held a press conference together with a civic group supporting the victims of Japan's forced labor during World War II.

They denounced the reported compensation proposal as "humiliating."

"The solution of the Yoon Suk Yeol government is a measure in which the executive branch nullifies decisions by the judicial branch and amounts to denying the Constitution," a lawmaker said. "This is no different from giving in to pressure from Japan and giving up the country's judicial sovereignty."

Victim groups have voiced strong opposition.

"We cannot tolerate any more the government's diplomacy of humiliation that blocks the execution of the court ruling that the victims won through tears of blood," DP Rep. Kim Sang-hee said.

"Why is the victim country trying so hard to exempt the perpetrator nation from responsibility," Lee Na-young, the head of the Korean Council for Justice and Remembrance for the Issues of Military Sexual Slavery by Japan, said.

On Thursday, Seoul's foreign ministry and ruling party leader Chung Jin-suk, head of the South Korea-Japan Parliamentarians' Union, were set to hold a public hearing on ways to resolve the compensation issue.

Seoul and Tokyo have held several rounds of working-level consultations on ways to resolve the issue after Yoon and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida agreed to seek a prompt settlement of the issue during their summit in Cambodia in November last year.

nyway@yna.co.kr
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