Seoul firms to pay to settle forced labour dispute with Japan

SEOUL: South Korea announced plans on Monday to compensate victims of Japan’s forced wartime labour, aiming to end a “vicious cycle” in the Asian powers’ relations and boost ties to counter the nuclear-armed North.

Japan and the United States immediately welcomed the announcement, but victims’ groups said it fell far short of their demand for a full apology from Tokyo and direct compensation from the Japanese companies involved.

Seoul and Tokyo have ramped up security cooperation in the face of growing threats from Kim Jong-un’s North Korea, which is expanding its nuclear weapons programme, in defiance of United Nations sanctions.

But Seoul-tokyo ties have long been strained over Tokyo’s brutal 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean peninsula, when around 780,000 Koreans were conscripted into forced labour by Japan, according to data from Seoul.

This does not include the Korean women forced into sexual slavery by Japanese troops.

Seoul’s plan is to take money from major South Korean companies that benefited from a 1965 reparations deal with Tokyo and use it to compensate victims and their families, South Korea’s foreign minister Park Jin said.

The hope is that Japan will “positively respond to our major decision today with Japanese companies’ voluntary contributions and a comprehensive apology”, he added.

Japanese foreign minister Yoshimasa Hayashi welcomed the new plan, saying it would help to restore “healthy” ties.

The plan does not include a fresh apology, although Hayashi said Tokyo stands by a 1998 declaration that included one.

The two sides quickly moved to ease trade disputes linked to a raft of tit-for-tat economic measures imposed as relations soured after a 2018 South Korean Supreme Court ruling ordered some Japanese companies to pay compensation.

But it remained unclear whether Japanese companies, including those such as Nippon Steel which were named in the 2018 court ruling, would make voluntary contributions to the new fund.

The move to resolve the forced-labour issue follows years of disputes over World War II sex slaves, which had soured Japan-south Korea ties.

Seoul and Tokyo reached a deal in 2015 aimed at “finally and irreversibly” resolving that issue, with a Japanese apology and the formation of a one-billion-yen ($7.4 million) fund for survivors.

But South Korea later effectively nullified that deal, citing a lack of victims’ consent, which led to a bitter diplomatic dispute that spread to affect trade and security ties.