South Korea said that its businesses would pay compensation to people who were forced to work during Japan’s occupation of Korea from 1910 to 1945. This was done to improve the tense relationship between the two countries, which has kept them from trading and working together for decades.
Relations between the two important US allies have been plagued by disputes over labour and women who are forced into Japanese military brothels for years, but South Korean president Yoon Suk-yeol has made an effort to mend the relationship.
In a statement, US president Joe Biden said the announcements were “a groundbreaking new chapter of cooperation and partnership between two of the United States’ closest allies” and a “critical step to forge a future for the Korean and Japanese people that is safer, more secure, and more prosperous.”
The proposal was welcomed in Tokyo but faced immediate backlash from some victims and South Korea’s main opposition party, which accused the government of capitulating to Japan because Japanese companies would not be expected to fund it.
The UK Guardian reports that under the plan, South Korea would compensate former forced labourers through an existing public foundation funded by private-sector companies, foreign minister Park Jin told a briefing.
“The soured South Korea-Japan relations should no longer be neglected, and we need to end the vicious cycle for the national interest, for the people,” Park said. He said he hoped Japan would respond sincerely, including by “implementing its previous public statements expressing remorse and apology”.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said he welcomed the proposal and would work closely with Yoon.
Japanese companies will not be expected to make any payments under the plan but will not be blocked from donating if they want to, said Japan’s Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi. “We welcome this as a step that returns Japan-South Korea relations to a healthy one,” he said.
Poor relations between the two have been a point of concern for the United States, which is seeking to present a more unified front with its allies against the rising power of China and threats from North Korea’s expanding missile and nuclear arsenal.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken applauded the “historic” plan and said South Korea and Japan are “two of the United States’ most important allies, and we are inspired by the work they have done to advance their bilateral relations”.
Because it excluded contributions from Japanese businesses, including those that South Korean courts had ordered to pay reparations, when Seoul first put forth the proposal in January, it sparked outrage from the victims and their families.
About a dozen protesters demonstrated outside as Park made the announcement.
“It’s a complete victory by Japan, which has said it will not pay a single yen on the forced labour issue,” Lim Jae-sung, a lawyer for several victims, said in a Facebook post recently, citing initial media reports of the deal.
The main opposition Democratic party denounced the plan as “submissive diplomacy.”
“It’s a day of shame,” An Ho-young, a spokesperson for the party, said in a statement. “Japanese companies involved in war crimes got a pass without having to do anything, and the Japanese government solved a problem by repeating what it had said before.”
Asked whether Japanese companies will pitch in to compensate, Park said both Japanese and South Korean businesses were considering a plan to make voluntary payments.
South Korea’s Yonhap news agency, citing unnamed government sources, said that as part of the deal, Seoul and Tokyo had tentatively agreed to create a separate “future youth fund” to sponsor scholarships with funds from companies in both countries.
Two of the companies ordered by South Korean courts to make restitution, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Nippon Steel, declined to comment on the agreement, referring to their long-held stance that the issue of compensating wartime labourers had been resolved under the 1965 treaty that normalised relations between South Korea and Japan.