S. Korea to announce forced labor compensation plan following talks with Japan

All News 10:11 March 06, 2023

SEOUL, March 6 (Yonhap) -- The South Korean government will make public its offer Monday of how to compensate victims of Japan's wartime forced labor, revolving around a fund raised through donations from domestic companies instead of direct payment from responsible Japanese firms, according to sources.

Under the scheme to be announced by the foreign ministry, the Foundation for Victims of Forced Mobilization by Imperial Japan is expected to seek donations from South Korean companies, such as steelmaker POSCO, that had benefited from a 1965 bilateral treaty under which Tokyo offered US$300 million in grants to Seoul, for compensations. The foundation was created in 2014 under the wing of South Korea's interior ministry in accordance with a related special law.

Victims and supporting civic groups have strongly protested the plan floated during a public hearing in December.

A group of progressive activists marches towards the foreign ministry in Seoul on Jan. 18, 2023, to convey their letter of protest against the South Korean government's solution for addressing the issue of compensation for wartime forced labor. (Yonhap)

In 2018, South Korea's Supreme Court ordered two Japanese firms -- Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. and Nippon Steel Corp. -- compensate the forced labor victims, while Tokyo maintains that all reparation issues related to Japan's 1910-45 colonization of Korea were settled in a 1965 deal to normalize bilateral diplomatic ties.

Seoul and Tokyo held several rounds of official talks on the thorny matter over the past several months in line with the conservative Yoon Suk Yeol administration's push for strengthening trilateral security partnership with the United States and Japan to counter North Korea's military threats.

The two sides have tentatively agreed to create a "future youth fund" to sponsor scholarships for students, an informed source said.

In return, Japan is expected to state its intent to honor a 1998 joint declaration adopted by then President Kim Dae-jung and then Japanese Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi.

In the declaration, the two leaders called for overcoming the past and building new relations, with Obuchi expressing remorse for the "horrendous damage and pain" Japan's colonial rule inflicted on the Korean people.