Forced labor victims, civic groups slam speaker's compensation proposal

Civic activists and lawyers hold a press conference in front of the National Assembly in Seoul, Wednesday, condemning Assembly Speaker Moon Hee-sang's idea for compensating wartime forced laborers through a joint fund pooled by Japanese and Korean companies. / Yonhap

Forced labor victims say they won't settle for anything less than legal responsibility and official reparations from Japan

By Lee Suh-yoon

Surviving South Korean victims of wartime forced labor and civic activists are dismayed by National Assembly Speaker Moon Hee-sang's proposal to compensate wartime forced laborers via a foundation funded by both Japanese and Korean companies and remaining funds in the now-defunct "Reconciliation and Healing Foundation" for wartime sex slavery victims under Imperial Japan.

The proposal is aimed at resolving the year-long deadlock between Seoul and Tokyo over Korea's Supreme Court rulings ordering Japanese firms to pay reparations to former forced laborers. Japan maintains all reparations issues were settled in a 1965 treaty normalizing relations between the two countries, and the firms, under pressure from the Shinzo Abe administration, have refused to abide by the rulings. The conflict has since spread to the two nations' trade and security relations.

According to a draft of a bill Moon is making to realize his proposal, a human rights foundation will be set up to manage a 300 billion won ($254 million) fund that can compensate up to 1,500 forced labor victims. It will be financed by "voluntary donations" from not only the Japanese firms that profited from the forced labor but also linked Korean companies, as well as Korean and Japanese citizens. Some six billion won the Japanese government pooled for the Reconciliation and Healing Foundation ― shut down last year over a similar controversy over the failure to recognize Japan's legal responsibility in the matter ― is also included.

Surviving forced labor victims immediately criticized the bill, saying it erodes the legitimacy of the hard-won Supreme Court decisions and frees Japan from accepting legal responsibility for its crimes.

"An official apology is what matters to me most," Yang Geum-deok, an 89-year-old who was forced to work at a Mitsubishi aircraft plant during World War II, said at a press conference in Gwangju on Wednesday, marking the one-year anniversary of her and four other plaintiffs' court victory over the firm. "I'm not a beggar. I won't accept compensation on such terms."

Kim Jung-ju, 88, another victim who toiled at Fujikoshi's aircraft parts factory in 1945, expressed similar sentiments in a phone interview with The Korea Times on Thursday.

"Yes, we (surviving victims) are old now and don't have much time left to collect compensation. But in truth, what we really wanted for all these years of waiting and crying inside Japanese (and Korean) courtrooms was a proper apology," she said. "Voluntary donations cannot be accepted. If we do, what will Japan make of our country? They must apologize and admit their wrongs."

Yang Geum-deok, a former forced laborer at Mitsubishi Heavy Industries during World War II, denounces National Assembly Speaker Moon Hee-sang's idea of establishing a compensation foundation, at a press conference in Gwangju, Wednesday. / Yonhap

Civic groups working with the victims criticized the bill, delivering a letter of protest to the speaker's office on Wednesday. Many experts and activists have also pointed out the proposed fund walks down the tried-and-failed path of the Reconciliation and Healing Foundation from 2015.

"By including the remaining 6 billion won fund from the Reconciliation and Healing Foundation to this new fund, [speaker Moon] is once again repeating the grave mistake of ignoring the victims' interests in the name of national security and the economy," Lee Na-young, a sociology professor at Chung-Ang University and activist for the "comfort women" issue, told reporters outside the National Assembly on Wednesday.

As a model for this new organization, the draft bill mentions Germany's "Foundation: Remembrance, Responsibility and Future," a 5.2 billion euro fund established in 2000 with formal reparations collected from the German government and German companies who made profits from Nazi labor camps. The fund compensated over 1.6 million individuals from some 100 countries.

The parallel is misleading, says Kim Jin-young, a senior researcher at the Center for Historical Truth and Justice, as Germany's foundation was an initiative actively led by the perpetrator state.

"Germany's fund was created by German firms voluntarily offering comprehensive reconciliatory measures as the cases about the German firms' wartime wrongdoings were still being tried in court. The perpetrators actively admitted their crimes," Kim explained. "To apply the German model to the Korean situation, all responsible Japanese firms ― not only the ones being tried ― have to voluntarily create a fund, actively seek out victims and offer reparations."