South Korea announced a contentious plan to raise local civilian funds to compensate Koreans who won damages in lawsuits against Japanese companies that enslaved them during the Second World War.
The plan reflects conservative South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol’s determination to mend frayed ties with Japan and solidify a trilateral Seoul-Tokyo-Washington security cooperation to better cope with North Korea’s nuclear threats.
But it has drawn an immediate backlash from former forced labourers and their supporters, who have demanded direct compensation from the Japanese companies.
South Korean foreign minister Park Jin told a televised news conference the victims would be compensated through a local foundation that would be funded by civilian donations.
He said South Korea and Japan were at a “new window of opportunity” to overcome their past conflicts and build future-oriented relations.
“And I think this is the last opportunity,” Mr Park said.
“If we compare it to a glass of water, (I) think that the glass is more than half full with water.
“We expect that the glass will be further filled moving forward based on Japan’s sincere response.”
Observers had earlier said the foundation would be funded by South Korean companies, which benefited from a 1965 Seoul-Tokyo treaty that normalised their relations.
The accord was accompanied by hundreds of millions of dollars in economic aid and loans from Tokyo to Seoul that were used in development projects carried out by major South Korean companies, including Posco, now a global steel giant.
Ties between the US Asian allies have long been complicated by grievances related to Japan’s brutal rule of the Korean Peninsula from 1910 to 1945, when hundreds of thousands of Koreans were mobilised as forced laborers for Japanese companies or sex slaves at Tokyo’s wartime brothels.
Their history disputes intensified after South Korea’s Supreme Court in 2018 ordered two Japanese companies, Nippon Steel and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, to compensate former Korean forced laborers or their bereaved relatives.
Japan, which insists all wartime compensation issues were settled under the 1965 treaty, reacted furiously to the 2018 rulings, placing export controls on chemicals vital to South Korea’s semiconductor industry in 2019, citing the deterioration of bilateral trust.
South Korea, then governed by Mr Yoon’s liberal predecessor Moon Jae-in, accused Japan of weaponising trade and subsequently threatened to terminate a military intelligence-sharing agreement with Tokyo, a major symbol of their three-way security cooperation with Washington.
The Seoul-Tokyo feuding complicated US efforts to reinforce its cooperation with its two key Asian allies in the face of confrontations with China and North Korea.
Worries about their strained ties have grown as North Korea last year adopted an escalatory nuclear doctrine and test-launched more than 70 missiles, the most-ever for a single year.
Since taking office in May last year, Mr Yoon has been seeking to improve ties with Japan and strengthen its military alliance with the United States and a trilateral Seoul-Washington-Tokyo security cooperation.
Former forced labourers, their supporters and liberal opposition lawmakers berated the government plan, calling it a diplomatic surrender.
Some activists supporting former forced laborers plan to hold rallies later on Monday.
“Basically, the money of South Korean companies would be used to erase the forced labourers’ rights to receivables,” Lim Jae-sung, a lawyer who represented some of the plaintiffs, wrote on Facebook.
“This is an absolute win by Japan, which insists it cannot spend one yen on the forced labour issue.”
