The Korea Herald

피터빈트

S. Korea starts paying Japan’s labor victims

By Choi Si-young

Published : April 13, 2023 - 18:32

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Foreign Minister Park Jin speaks during a meeting with South Korea’s diplomatic mission chiefs at the ministry headquarters in Seoul on March 27, 2023. (Yonhap) Foreign Minister Park Jin speaks during a meeting with South Korea’s diplomatic mission chiefs at the ministry headquarters in Seoul on March 27, 2023. (Yonhap)

Ten out of the 15 South Korean victims, all entitled to compensation from Japanese companies as per a 2018 Korean court ruling holding the firms liable for damages for colonial forced labor, will receive their payments from a state-run fund, the Foreign Ministry in Seoul said Thursday.

The decision is the latest follow-up on a March 6 initiative that Seoul proposed to move past the historical dispute amid Tokyo’s refusal to recognize the ruling. Japan says a 1965 treaty that normalized ties following Tokyo’s 1910-45 rule of the Korean Peninsula had resolved the issue. The pact included economic aids.

The state-run fund meant to pay the 10 Korean victims by Friday will be drawing from contributions from steelmaker Posco, one of the companies that had benefited from the economic aids decades ago. The steelmaker last month donated 4 billion won ($3 million) to the fund; the 10 victims will each receive up to a little less than $220,000.

“By the end of day Friday, the victims will receive compensation, with interest. They said they hope to see the entire matter resolved soon,” Seo Min-jung, director general for Asia and Pacific affairs at the Foreign Ministry in Seoul, said at an unscheduled briefing held to update the public.

Efforts to bring closure are underway, Seo added, saying the ministry and the state-run foundation handling the fund will work more closely to make that happen, in a clear reference to the remaining five victims who have openly refused to take the government’s money.

Those victims demand the Japanese firms offer an official apology for the rights abuses. The companies, along with the Japanese government, have indicated such a follow-up would not take place.

The March 6 initiative the Yoon Suk Yeol administration has announced essentially skips a formal apology, a humiliating course of action since it lets the “Japanese off the hook,” according to groups representing the victims.