Seoul Looks to Setup Private Compensation Fund for Victim’s of Imperial Japanese Forced Labor
The Korean government is trying to resolved the forced labor issue the same way the comfort women issue was resolved before it wasn’t:
The South Korean government is considering a method to compensate victims of Japan’s wartime forced labor through a public foundation fund rather than direct payment from responsible Japanese firms, officials here confirmed during a public hearing Thursday.
Victims and supporting civic groups, however, strongly protested the move, saying that the issue is not about money but that of addressing past human rights violations of Japan.
The government’s controversial plan was announced during the event held at the National Assembly in Seoul on ways to resolve the thorny issue of compensating victims in line with the Supreme Court’s back-to-back landmark rulings in 2018 against Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. and Nippon Steel Corp., respectively.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link, but expect the Korean left to do everything they can to sink this proposal like they did with the comfort women fund. Like the comfort women issue, the forced labor issue is too politically useful for the Korean left to let it get resolved.
The Korean right wants to resolve this issue in order to expand cooperation with Japan in other areas. Japan wants the issue resolved, but only through a private entity as proposed because their official position is that all financial claims were resolved with the 1965 normalization treaty where they paid a $800 million reparation fee to the Korean government who invested that money into the Korean economy and infrastructure instead of individual victim payments.
Korea, always looking backward.
Korea doesn’t have the lockdown on stupidity.
California wants people who never owned slaves to pay people who never were slaves in a state that never had slaves.
When Park Chung-hee was negotiating with the Japanese at ’65, the Korean government tabled the compensation amount based on the number of laborers and the amount that they were entitled to, among other things.
Eventually the USD 800 mil figure was agreed upon and with the exception of USD 12 mil which went to some of the former laborers, the rest of the money was used for Korea’s economic development including Pohang Steel Works and Subway Line No.1.
So yes it would be logical for let’s say Pohang Steel(POSCO) to put money into a compensation fund considering that they were the beneficiaries of the money that was supposed to go to the forced laborers.
Ironically the proposal in question was the brainchild of the Moon administration with the main difference being that Moon proposed that both Korean and Japanese companies contribute to the fund.
The Yoon administration simply took the Moon administration’s idea and took the Japanese companies out of the equation, which should satisfy the Japanese.
Of course it is the various groups which made it their mission to get compensation from the Japanese who won’t be happy along with the DPK politicians who depend on political support from these groups.
So TOK.
Let me get this straight.
Yoon stole Moon’s idea? LOL.
So original of the sitting buffoon president.