hankyoreh

A Japanese mine in Nagasaki Prefecture where many Koreans were forced to work as laborers under harsh conditions with minimal compensation during the colonial era. (Hankyoreh archives)

In 1942, 17-year-old Lee Cheon-gu was taken from his home in Seocheon, South Chungcheong Province, to the Yawata Steel Works in Japan’s Fukuoka Prefecture.

One day, he got a visit from a police officer and an official in charge of family registers at the township’s government office. “The township official told me I’d been chosen for the draft. If I ran away, I’d be causing my parents to suffer. There was nothing you could do, at least back then,” Lee said.

And so Lee was taken away, with no choice in the matter. He worked at a factory that produced ammonia fertilizer. At mealtime, his only food was a little rice, half a bowl of miso soup, two strips of pickled radish, and a couple of fermented black soybeans. Unable to endure the hunger, he fled the steel works in 1943 and started doing odd jobs at the Imamura Factory in Wakamatsu Ward, which produced ironware.

Following Japan’s surrender, Lee traveled to Shimonoseki in Sept. 1945 to return to Korea, but he couldn’t arrange passage by ship. Vast numbers of Koreans had congregated to Shimonoseki, and dozens of them were dying of infectious diseases each day. After being told he could accelerate his passage by clearing away corpses, Lee worked on corpse removal for ten days and was finally able to board a ship.

Lee’s story appears in “I Nearly Drowned on the Motorboat,” a collection of oral accounts published in 2006 by a commission that investigated the harm caused by forced mobilization and labor during Japan’s colonial occupation of South Korea.

A memorial to the 136 Koreans who lost their lives at the Chosei Coal Mine in Yamaguchi Prefecture during the colonial occupation. (Hankyoreh archives)

The period of forced labor that is the context for the damages lawsuit on which the Supreme Court made a ruling on Oct. 30 is typically regarded as lasting from 1939 to 1945. The legal grounds for forced labor were provided by the National Mobilization Law, which Japan passed in 1938, the year after it went to war with China. At first, and superficially, this took the form of “recruitment,” but in actuality, all kinds of coercive and compulsory measures were used.

In 2005, Yu Je-cheol told investigators from the commission that he’d initially gone on the run to escape conscription. But after the township mayor had Yu’s father beaten and told to find his son, Yu allowed himself to be taken to a smeltery in Kyushu.

After receiving permission from the Japanese colonial administration, Japanese companies would often enlist the aid of powerful figures in Korea, such as the police and mayors, to lure or compel powerless people in rural areas to join their workforce. Another method was for the colonial administration to set a quota of people to be recruited for a given company, with low-level administrators responsible for personally meeting that quota.

In Sept. 1944, the Japanese began using a more explicit method of forced labor conscription, in which conscription warrants were issued for specific individuals. While there are no accurate statistics for the number of Koreans who were conscripted into labor, it’s estimated that around 1.5 million were sent outside of Korea, to places including Japan and Manchuria, and around 2 million were mobilized at workplaces in Korea. Since the population of Korea at the time of its liberation was around 25 million people, it’s safe to say that the entire nation was affected by forced labor.

Countless labor conscripts died in accidents or ended their own lives because of the harsh labor conditions. In 1942, 136 Koreans died when the Chosei Coal Mine in Yamaguchi Prefecture was flooded. This mine, with its horrendous work environment, was notorious for being the destination of many force-conscripted Koreans. “A Record of Koreans’ Forced Labor,” a book by the late Park Gyeong-sik that was published in 1965, lists the causes of death of five Koreans whose lives ended at the Osarizawa Mine in Akita Prefecture. Two were poisoned by the cowbane that was mixed in with the plants they randomly picked and ate to satisfy their hunger; one bit off his own tongue; and two had skull fractures.

These hardships did not end with liberation. After its defeat, Japan took few steps to find ways for the Koreans to return home. Despite the awful weather, Koreans would board rickety wooden ships called “yamiseon,” many of which ended up sinking in typhoons along with the passengers’ dreams of returning home. Among the Koreans forced to work for Mitsubishi Heavy Industries in Hiroshima, more than 240 got lost on their way back to Korea. It’s presumed that these workers – who had barely managed to survive the atomic bomb that fell on Hiroshima – met their end in a typhoon.

The majority of the victims were teenagers and young adults in the countryside, people who were powerless and poor, even by colonial standards. The companies that exploited these workers -- Mitsubishi, Mitsui and Sumitomo – survived the US military government’s policy of dismantling Japan’s conglomerates, known as zaibatsu, after World War II and even today remain some of Japan’s biggest and best-known corporations. The Aso Mining Company, which was notorious for its forced mobilization of Koreans, was the forerunner of the Aso Group, which today is still a powerful company that puts up advertisements all over Fukuoka.

The Koreans here had to face physical abuse and work as long as 17 hours a day. They weren’t allowed to leave the mine until they met their quota, and a three-meter wooden fence was erected around their lodgings to prevent them from escaping. Survivors recall that their pay was so meager that it was barely enough to buy snacks to calm their aching bellies. The Aso Mining Company was established by the great-grandfather of Taro Aso, former prime minister of Japan and the current deputy prime minister and minister of finance.

Nor has the South Korean government taken much interest in providing remedies for the victims. In an addendum to the 1965 Treaty on Basic Relations between Japan and the Republic of Korea, the government of former president Park Chung-hee reached an agreement with Japan about bilateral economic cooperation and the right to make claims. As part of this agreement, Japan agreed to provide US$500 million in funding to South Korea ($300 million in grants and $200 million in loans), while the two sides confirmed that all matters related to claims between the two nations had been completely and finally resolved.

Based on this agreement about economic cooperation and the right to make claims, Japan contends that not only the South Korean government’s right to claim compensation from the Japanese government but also individual victims’ right to claim damages and compensation from Japanese companies have lapsed. For a long time, the South Korean government basically chose not to reject such Japanese claims. It took 67 years after liberation before South Korea’s Supreme Court ruled that individuals’ right to make claims is still valid. During that ruling, the Supreme Court said that “the right to claim damages and compensation has not lapsed because it was not subject to the agreement about the right to make claims.”

The South Korean government has not provided enough compensation on its own, either. Between 1975 and 1977, the government paid around 2.57 billion won (US$2.3 million) to the families of 8,552 deceased individuals, amounting to 300,000 won (US$263) per family, according to the Act on Compensation for the Private-Sector Right to Make Claims against Japan. Then in 2007, after the South Korean government received lists from Japan detailing over 108,900 cases of deposits for soldiers and employees for the military (a total value of 91 million yen, or US$803,649) and over 64,200 cases of deposits for workers (a total value of 35 million yen, or US$309,155), it used government funds to pay the victims between several hundred and several million won per person, with the amount calculated on a ratio of 1 yen to 2,000 won.

But even these recipients are just a fraction of the whole. Research into forced mobilization has generally been carried out by Japanese NGOs and by Korean-Japanese individuals such as Park Gyeong-sik. Official investigation efforts by the South Korean government were begun by the commission studying forced mobilization, which was launched in 2004.

By Cho Ki-weon, Tokyo correspondent

Please direct comments or questions to [english@hani.co.kr]