South Korea’s Yoon rushes compensation deal on forced labour row as he seeks to mend ties with Japan

Name: South Korea, instead of Japanese firms, to compensate families of WWII forced labour victims
Uploaded: 2023-03-06T09:30:10.000Z
Duration: 2 min 53 s
Description: South Korea, instead of Japanese firms, to compensate families of WWII forced labour victims

Seoul took a step towards mending ties with Tokyo by proposing its own scheme to compensate South Korean victims of Japan’s wartime forced labour

The plan which would pay victims through a Seoul-backed fund rather than the Japanese firms that enslaved them has been called ‘humiliating’ by critics

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Former South Korean comfort woman rally against the government’s move to improve relations with Japan after it introduced a plan to compensate wartime forced labour via a Seoul-backed fund. Photo: AP

Park Chan-kyongin Seoul

Published: 5:30pm, 6 Mar 2023Updated: 9:20pm, 6 Mar 2023

South Korea’s scheme to resolve the protracted diplomatic row over the compensation of Korean victims of Japan’s wartime forced labour has been condemned by critics as “humiliating”, as President Yoon Suk-yeol rushes to mend ties with Japan.

Yoon announced the deal on Monday, citing the need to bolster three-way defence cooperation with Japan and the United States over threats from North Korea.

Washington, which hailed the agreement as “groundbreaking”, has been putting pressure on both Seoul and Tokyo, its strongest allies in Asia, to put their historical issues behind them to focus on Pyongyang’s growing nuclear and missile threats, and restrain an increasingly assertive China.

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South Korea, instead of Japanese firms, to compensate families of WWII forced labour victims

The move comes as Yoon is reportedly seeking to hold a summit with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in Tokyo later this month, bilateral talks with US President Joe Biden in April and a three-way meeting with both leaders in May.

The deal announced by South Korean Foreign Minister Park Jin said victims would receive reparations from a Seoul-backed fund instead of Japanese firms linked to forced labour. “I hope that this resolution will open a new chapter in history for both Korea and Japan, help overcome antagonism and move towards the future,” he said.

President Yoon was quoted by local media as saying the decision was based on a “determination” for “future-oriented South Korea-Japan relations”.

This is a diplomatic disaster that amounts to giving up the country’s legal sovereignty

Kim Young-hwan, Center for Historical Truth and Justice spokesman

But Seoul’s solution was met with anger from critics and the opposition liberal Democratic Party.

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