As South Korea seeks to mend ties with Japan, forced labour victims fear a repeat of 2015’s ‘comfort women’ deal fiasco

The two countries’ top diplomats held a rare meeting in Tokyo on Monday to discuss how they could end one of their long-running historical disputes

They agreed ‘to find a solution’. But the plan that’s been proposed has raised suspicions that it’s the victims who’ll be forced to make concessions

4-MIN READ4-MIN

South Korean Foreign Minister Park Jin, left, bumps elbows with his Japanese counterpart Yoshimasa Hayashi before their talks in Tokyo on Monday. Photo: Reuters

Published: 12:02pm, 19 Jul 2022Updated: 3:14pm, 19 Jul 2022

The foreign ministers of South Korea and Japan have agreed to find an early resolution to the two countries’ long-running dispute over compensation for Korean victims of wartime force labour – but it remains to be seen how the two sides will overcome what one analyst called their “seemingly incompatible objectives”.

In a rare meeting of the two neighbours’ top diplomats in Tokyo on Monday, South Korea’s Foreign Minister Park Jin and his Japanese counterpart, Yoshimasa Hayashi, held talks on how to mend ties soured by the legacy of Japan’s colonial rule of the Korean peninsula from 1910-45.

Relations between the two countries have long been dogged by disputes over history and territory. But the issue of compensation for wartime forced labour sent ties into a nosedive after 2018, when South Korea’s Supreme Court ordered Japanese companies Nippon Steel and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries to make amends to the surviving victims.

Both companies refused to pay, leaving the victims to seek the legal seizure of the firms’ assets in South Korea, with a ruling by the country’s top court on their liquidation expected by the end of the year.

Japan’s government has previously made it known that it would retaliate against South Korea if the liquidations go ahead.

‘Peace and prosperity under turbulent circumstances’

Park said Seoul would “make efforts to find a solution” to the issue, according to a South Korean foreign ministry statement, which added that both ministers shared the view that an early resolution was needed.