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Masatoshi Muto

“The very fact that such a ruling could happen at this point is incomprehensible. There would never be a ruling like this in Japan.”

This was the opinion shared in a July 19 interview with the JoongAng Ilbo newspaper by Masatoshi Muto, a former Japanese ambassador to South Korea. Voicing a critical perspective on a South Korean Supreme Court ruling last year recognizing the liability of a Japanese company implicated in war crimes for compensation for forced labor mobilization, Muto said the Moon Jae-in administration had “reneged on an agreement” with its response measures on a South Korea-Japan comfort women agreement and the forced labor issue.

In a Korea Economic Daily interview published the same day, former South Korean Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Yu Mung-hwan shared concerns about the “disappearance of diplomacy.” In an “anonymous” interview conducted with four former foreign ministers, including Song Min-soon, Yu added his voice to those claiming an “inadequate” practical grasp of the situation and response from the South Korean administration.

After previously siding with war crime-implicated Japanese companies such as Mitsubishi and Nippon Steel and Sumitomo Metal in the search for a resolution on the forced labor compensation issue, Muto and Yu have recently begun “kibitzing” in South Korea from their respective roles as a former ambassador to South Korea and a former foreign minister. Critics argued that it was “inappropriate” to report only their arguments on the current situation without mentioning their histories of supporting companies implicated in war crimes. Neither of the two interviews mentioned Muto and Yu’s respective roles as an advisor to Mitsubishi and as a advisor for Kim & Chang, a law firm representing the company.

According to a July 21 indictment against former Supreme Court Chief Justice Yang Seung-tae and others, Muto joined Mitsubishi as an advisor in January 2013 after previously serving as ambassador to South Korea from 2010 to 2012. He subsequently attempted to contact figures in South Korean government by way of Kim & Chang, which was representing Mitsubishi. According to the content of an email from Kim & Chang attorney Cho Gwi-jang made public during the trial over judicial misbehavior, the law firm said while coordinating Muto’s South Korea visit schedule that he “believes a political solution by both countries’ governments may be necessary rather than one by an individual company” and that he “wishes to speak with Hyun Hong-choo, Yun Byung-se, and Yu Myung-hwan.” Both Yu and Yun were working as advisors for Kim & Chang at the time.

Indeed, Muto met on Jan. 28 of that year with Yun, who was then seen as likely to be selected as the Park Geun-hye administration’s first foreign minister. Prosecutors believe that during that meeting, the two discussed measures for resolving the conclusion of a 2012 Supreme Court ruling through a request dismissal based on a political resolution.

Yu joined Kim & Chang as an advisor in 2011 after serving as Foreign Minister from 2008 to 2010. In November 2014, he was part of a Kim & Chang “conscription incident response team” with former South Korean Ambassador to the US Hyun Hong-choo that communicated several times with then Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se. A former South Korean chairman in the Korea-Japan Forum, Yu accompanied former Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori and former South Korean Prime Minister Yi Hong-gu in a June 2015 meeting with Park Geun-hye, during which he communicated the opinion that the 2012 Supreme Court ruling “cannot be left in its current state” and “must be resolved politically.” Yu was recently called as a witness in Yang Sung-tae’s trial but submitted a document stating that he could not attend on the grounds that he was “invited as a speaker in Japan” and his “schedule does not permit it.”

Choi Bong-tae, an attorney with the team offering legal representation and support in the forced labor conscription survivors’ lawsuits to claim damages, said, “It is quite brazen for people who represented a company implicated in war crimes to hold interviews with the press as though they represented a ‘neutral’ perspective while concealing their own pasts.”

By Ko Han-sol, staff reporter

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