(2nd LD) S. Korea offers compensation for forced labor victims via Seoul-based public foundation

All News 12:58 March 06, 2023

(ATTN: UPDATES with details in 3rd para; ADDS remarks by S. Korea's foreign minister, Japan's leader in last paras; ADDS photo)

SEOUL, March 6 (Yonhap) -- The South Korean government formally proposed Monday compensating more than a dozen victims of Japan's wartime forced labor through a Seoul-backed public foundation, instead of direct payment from responsible Japanese firms.

The proposal announced by Foreign Minister Park Jin is intended to resolve the issue of compensating 15 Koreans who won legal battles against two Japanese firms accused of mobilizing them for hard labor during World War II.

In 2018, South Korea's Supreme Court ordered Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. and Nippon Steel Corp. to pay them compensation. Refusing to follow the order, they have faced the risk of their assets in South Korea being liquidated."

Under the Yoon Suk Yeol administration's scheme, the Foundation for Victims of Forced Mobilization, affiliated with the interior ministry, will collect "voluntary" donations from the private sector. It also plans to use the foundation, created in 2014, to compensate other plaintiffs who win pending cases.

The government is expected to seek donations from South Korean companies that benefited from a 1965 bilateral treaty, such as steelmaker POSCO, under which Tokyo offered US$300 million in grants to Seoul. Still, victims and supporting civic groups have strongly protested the plan floated earlier during a public hearing.

People watch breaking news on the South Korean government's plan to compensate victims of Japan's wartime forced labor through a Seoul-backed public foundation on a television installed at Seoul Station on March 6, 2023. (Yonhap)

Tokyo has maintained that all reparation issues related to Japan's 1910-45 colonization of Korea were settled in a 1965 deal to normalize bilateral diplomatic ties.

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

Seoul's top diplomat expressed hope in a statement that the two nations will honor a 1998 joint declaration adopted by then President Kim Dae-jung and then 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.

Regarding criticism that Seoul's offer lacks direct participation by the accused Japanese companies, Park said "the glass is half full" and it could be filled more in accordance with Tokyo's "sincere" response.

He expressed hope that the Japanese government will offer a "comprehensive" apology and the Japanese firms will make voluntary contributions to the foundation.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida gave no immediate response, speaking to reporters in Tokyo, just saying that the nation's foreign minister plans to comment later officially on South Korea's move.

Separately, the business communities of the two sides have agreed to create a joint "future youth fund" to sponsor scholarships for students, an informed source said.