Seoul (EFE).- The South Korean government today presented a plan to compensate 15 people enslaved by Japanese companies during World War II that has aroused criticism from some victims or their families as it is based on a fund financed with money from South Korean companies and not Japanese.
The Japanese Prime Minister, Fumio Kishida, today praised the plan presented by Seoul to compensate the people enslaved by Japanese companies during World War II, and pointed out that his government will maintain its apologies for the ordeal suffered by those affected.
The proposal seeks to resolve one of the disputes that weighs the most between the two countries
The proposal, announced by Foreign Minister Park Jin, seeks to resolve one of the disputes that weighs the most on the relations of both countries.
The plan seeks to compensate 15 Koreans who won lawsuits in 2018 against Nippon Steel and Mitsubishi’s heavy industry division, which forcibly mobilized these people in the early 1940s, when Japan still maintained its colonial rule over the Korean peninsula.
The plan designed by the Government of the conservative Yoon Suk-yeol seeks to collect “voluntary” donations from companies.
Specifically, it is expected that companies such as the Posco steelworks will pay a significant part of these compensations.
Posco was one of the main beneficiaries of an aid package valued at 300 million dollars that Tokyo offered to Seoul to compensate victims of Japanese colonization as part of the agreement for the establishment of bilateral relations signed in 1965.
The Japanese authorities defend that all the compensations in this field were resolved based on that bilateral treaty.
Documents from the time have shown that Tokyo wanted to directly manage compensation for the victims, but the South Korean government, in the hands of coup general Park Chung-hee at that time, insisted on managing that aid, which ended up being used to finance Posco, today one of the largest South Korean companies, or for the construction of the country’s main highway.
Contrariness of many of the victims with the plan
In any case, many victims or their families have expressed their disagreement with the plan, which in principle exempts the two companies from apologizing or compensating them directly.
The two countries have held several rounds of talks on the thorny issue in recent months in line with the new impetus that the Yoon government, which came to power last year, has wanted to give to strengthening relations, which under his predecessor, the liberal Moon Jae-in, experienced their worst moment in decades.
In turn, Foreign Minister Park expressed today his wish that both countries respect a joint declaration signed by both countries in 1998, in which the then South Korean and Japanese leaders, Kim Dae-jung and Keizo Obuchi, urged to overcome the differences of the past to build a relationship for the future.
In that statement, Obuchi also expressed regret and apologized for the “horrendous pain and damage” caused by the Japanese colonization of the peninsula between 1010 and 1945.