hankyoreh

Ri Jong-hyok

“No future awaits a people that forgets its history. South and North Korea should work in concert to ferret out Japan’s crimes and to ensure that such an unhappy history never again befalls generations to come,” said Ri Jong-hyok, vice chairman of North Korea’s Asia-Pacific Peace Committee, on Nov. 16. Ri was visiting South Korea to attend an international forum on peace and prosperity in the Asia-Pacific region, co-organized by Gyeonggi Province and the Asia-Pacific Exchange Association.

During this event, which was held on Friday at the MVL Hotel in Goyang, Gyeonggi Province, participants from South Korea, North Korea and Japan adopted a five-point joint declaration that called for setting up peace parks and monuments commemorating the victims of compulsory mobilization in a manner suitable to each country’s circumstances, recovering the remains of the victims, carrying out fact-finding investigations and establishing joint foundations.

This was the first time that a North Korean delegation attended an event held in South Korea to denounce war crimes, including Japan’s conscription of Koreans for forced labor, and to seek a joint response.

“What Japan did to the Korean people was a vicious crime of genocide that surpassed the crimes that the Germans committed against the Jews in World War II, but even today, seventy years after Japan’s defeat in the war, the Japanese authorities resist even recognizing what occurred, let alone making an apology or providing compensation. The Japanese government needs to directly investigate the crimes of compulsory mobilization and abduction, to disclose the whole truth and to apologize and provide compensation to the bereaved families,” Ri said.

Ri proposed that the Japanese government undertake the following tasks to address its history of compulsory mobilization and abduction of Koreans: investigate the facts of the compulsory mobilization and abduction and make them all public, acknowledge its national responsibility for the compulsory mobilization and abduction of Koreans, make an official apology and provide compensation to the victims and the family members of the deceased, take practical steps to recover and repatriate the remains of all those who died after being forcibly mobilized or abducted.

During a keynote address following Ri’s speech, Yukio Hatoyama, former Japanese prime minister, said, “The Abe administration says that it has to put pressure [on North Korea] first on the abduction [of Japanese by North Korea] and then on the nuclear and missile issues, but I have a different take on this. Japan ought to begin by normalizing diplomatic relations with North Korea and then look for solutions to a range of issues, including the abduction issue.”

“It’s a historical fact that the Korean Peninsula was divided as a result of Japan colonizing the Korean Peninsula and later entering World War II, and it can’t be denied that Japan is greatly responsible for this. Japan needs to soberly accept such historical facts and take unlimited responsibility. It needs to continue apologizing until the people who have been harmed by war extend their forgiveness and say that Japan doesn’t need to apologize anymore,” Hatoyama said.

In the next keynote lecture titled “Ways to Overcome Challenges in the Process of Resolving the North Korean Nuclear Issue,” former South Korean Unification Minister Jeong Se-hyun voiced concerns about changes in American policy.

“When the question of implementing the nuclear agreement reached in Singapore on June 12 by the leaders of North Korea and the US passed into the hands of low-level bureaucrats in the US, they reverted to the conventions of the past 25 years, namely demanding that North Korea take the first steps,” Jeong said.

“If the US’ recently formulated policy on North Korean nuclear weapons is that North Korea can be rewarded after it submits a nuclear inventory and allows inspections and verification, I’m concerned that the Trump administration is attempting to return to the ‘Libya method,’ which was the Bush administration’s method of resolving the North Korean nuclear issue.”

Jeong explained that Libyan leader Muammar el-Qaddafi voluntarily denuclearized in 2003 on the belief that the US was acting in good faith and even established diplomatic relations with the US in 2006, only to come to a horrible end in 2011. Since that time, Jeong said, North Korea has been stoutly opposed to denuclearizing without any corresponding measures.

“In order to alleviate North Korea’s anxiety and resistance, the countries around the Korean Peninsula need to create a system for promoting and monitoring North Korea’s denuclearization, consisting of both a two-party component (North Korea and the US) and a four-party component (South Korea, China, Russia and the US), in order to assure that the US doesn’t unilaterally threaten the safety of the North Korean regime after it moves to denuclearize,” Jeong suggested.

vice chairman of North Korea’s Asia-Pacific Peace Committee

During the discussion, Park In-hwan, a professor at Konkuk University, described the content and significance of a recent ruling by South Korea’s Supreme Court about compulsory mobilization.

“This ruling responds to decisions by the Japanese judiciary and urges the Japanese government to change its current attitude. It also provides the grounds both diplomatically, and in terms of domestic and international law, for the governments of South Korea and Japan to approach the issue of settling the historical matters between them,” said Park, who previously served as a chair of a South Korean government commission that was organized to aid victims of compulsory mobilization overseas and to investigate the damage caused by compulsory mobilization during the period of resistance to Japan.

On Oct. 30, the full bench of the South Korean Supreme Court rejected an appeal by Nippon Steel and Sumitomo Metal (formerly Japan Iron and Steel) in a damages lawsuit filed by victims of compulsory mobilization during the Japan colonial occupation of Korea and upheld the lower court’s ruling that the company must pay 100 million won (US$89,181) in compensation to each of the victims.

During a welcome address earlier in the day, Gyeonggi Governor Lee Jae-myung said, “South and North Korea will take this meeting as an opportunity to move into meaningful exchange and cooperation. I hope that the mood for peace will spread throughout the Asia-Pacific region.”

After the discussion was over, Gyeonggi Province Vice Governor for Peace Lee Hwa-young met with reporters. “The North Koreans have actively expressed their desire to invite Governor Lee Jae-myung to visit. The timing has not yet been determined, but Lee hopes to visit North Korea using the overland route.”

Hosted by Gyeonggi Province and the Korean Asia-Pacific Peace Committee, this conference was designed to bring together both the aggressors and the victims of aggression during the Pacific War to discuss peaceful cooperation. The North Korean delegation that came to South Korea on Nov. 14 to attend the conference also visited Pangyo Techno Valley and the Gyeonggi Province Center for Agricultural Technology and shared opinions with Gyeonggi Province about forms of exchange and cooperation between the regions on Nov. 15. The North Korean delegation is planning to return home via Gimpo Airport on the morning of Nov. 17.

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