SOUTH KOREA-JAPAN Seoul proposes an agreement with Tokyo for compensation for forced labor

A victims’ foundation will be created to which Japanese companies involved in the colonial era and other Korean companies can make donations. A wound that in recent years has also fueled political tensions and commercial retaliation. But President Yoon wants to turn the page to strengthen cooperation against threats from Pyongyang.

Seoul () – After years of political tensions and trade retaliation, South Korea and Japan they seem determined to make amends. Not only with each other, but above all with the colonial history that both countries share. After months of bilateral negotiations, the Seoul government this morning released its proposal on how to resolve the issue of reparations to South Korean citizens who were forced into forced labor by the imperial Japanese authorities during World War II.

The historical memory of the years of imperial rule over the Korean peninsula, which lasted from 1910 to 1945, is an element that continues to greatly influence the perception of Japan in South Korea today. What weighs on this image is, above all, the suspicion that the governments of Tokyo never really repudiated that period and were not truly sorry for the suffering inflicted on them (a suspicion that the repeated visits of ministers and senior officials to the controversial Yasukuni Shinto Shrine only increase). Added to this is the alleged Japanese unwillingness to atone for its colonial crimes and grant justice to the Korean victims.

The Seoul High Court had tried to make up for this in 2018, with a verdict ordering Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Nippon Steel (two Japanese companies historically involved in trafficking Korean labor during the war) to compensate victims who had been employed as forced labor. The two companies never complied with the order because, the Tokyo government claimed, the issues of reparations and Korea’s colonial domination had already been resolved by the normalization agreement signed between the two countries in 1965. The judicial authorities in Seoul proceeded then to freeze certain assets of the two companies, with the intention of liquidating them and later compensating the victims with the proceeds; but by that point in 2019, tensions between South Korea and Japan had erupted into a full-blown trade conflict.

To resolve this issue, which has weighed on relations between the two countries for five years, the Seoul Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced this morning that South Korea will create a foundation through which the victims who the Supreme Court has recognized the right to compensation will be compensated. Under the South Korean proposal, Japanese companies will not be required to make a certain contribution to the foundation for victims, but rather the donation will be made on a voluntary basis. South Korean companies to which Tokyo provided financial support after the 1965 agreement will also be able to contribute to the initiative.

“The government hopes that both South Korea and Japan will work together to develop future relations based on reconciliation and friendly cooperation, overcoming the sad history of the past,” said South Korean Foreign Minister Park Jin. Since conservative President Yoon Suk-yeol took office last year, Seoul has softened its stance toward Tokyo in hopes of strengthening trade relations and strategic cooperation in the face of North Korean threats.