South Korea's 100-Year Grievance With Japan Still Isn't Settled
South Korea’s Supreme Court has held two of Japan’s largest companies liable for compensation in cases of forced labor during Japan’s 1910-45 colonization of the Korean Peninsula. Japan says it cannot accept the rulings.
Kim Sung-joo, a victim of forced labour during Japan’s colonial rule of the Korean peninsula from 1910 to 1945, is surrounded by reporters as she arrives at the Supreme Court in Seoul on Nov. 29.
Photographer: Jung Yeon-je/AFP via Getty Images
Japan’s colonial rule over the Korean Peninsula ended more than seven decades ago yet that legacy continues to roil everyday politics on both sides of the strait. South Korea and Japan, major trading partners and both U.S. military allies, have been at loggerheads over what constitutes proper contrition and compensation for two groups of Koreans: those conscripted to work in factories and mines supplying Japan’s imperial war machine, and those euphemistically called “comfort women” who were forced to work in military brothels before and during World War II. Japan contends all claims were settled under a 1965 bilateral treaty and a fund set up in 2015. Seoul argues Japan hasn’t atoned enough. Some of Japan’s largest companies and the emperor himself have been dragged into the fray.
Hundreds of thousands of Koreans were conscripted during the 1910-1945 colonial period to work, often in brutal conditions, at dozens of Japanese companies. At the time of the 1965 treaty, which established diplomatic ties between the two countries, Japan paid the equivalent of $300 million -- $2.4 billion in today’s money -- and extended $200 million in low-interest loans. The treaty said all claims are “settled completely and finally.” The then-struggling South Korea invested that money in industries that eventually helped turn it into an economic powerhouse. However, recent South Korean court rulings said the victims were not compensated for their emotional pain and suffering.