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Activists from NGOs in South Korea and Japan gather to discuss the issue of forced labor under imperial Japan in Seoul on Aug. 14.

Activists from NGOs in South Korea and Japan gathered together to resolve the issue of forced labor during the Japanese colonial occupation on Aug. 14, the day before Liberation Day, when Korea celebrates the end of the occupation. Japanese activists took the lead in castigating the Japanese government, under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, for imposing punitive economic measures on South Korea and ignoring the facts of history.

An international conference aimed at tackling the forced labor issue was held on the afternoon of Aug. 14 at the conference center at the Jogye Temple in Seoul’s Jongno District. The event was organized by a group called Joint Action to Resolve the Issue of Compulsory Mobilization and to Settle Japan and Korea’s Historical Disputes.

“Nine months have passed since the South Korean Supreme Court made its ruling, but the victims’ human rights haven’t been restored, and the Abe administration keeps playing the victim card in an attempt to hide its guilt,” said Hideki Yano, the first speaker at the conference. As the Japanese secretary-general of Joint Action, Yano has been pressing the Japanese government and companies to apologize and offer reparations for Japan’s colonial occupation. For 25 years now, since 1995, he has been supporting the victims of forced labor in their legal battle.

Keishi Ueda, an activist with a group called Remains of the Fallen to the Arms of Their Families, has continued to push the Japanese government to help Koreans recover the remains of loved ones who died in Japan. “The Abe administration has dishonored the victims of colonization and their bereaved family members. It has been seeking to erase its history as an aggressor while orchestrating public amnesia about Japan’s history of aggression,” Ueda said.

Activists from NGOs in both countries are in agreement that now is the time for Koreans and Japanese to stand together. “The struggle of the victims of forced labor, and especially the court battle they’ve waged for more than two decades, has uncovered the darkness of the [1965] negotiations between South Korea and Japan [over the right to make claims] and broken down the barriers of judicial decisions to pave the way toward restoring their rights. South Korea-Japan relations are said to be worse than at any point since they normalized diplomatic relations in 1965, but Koreans and Japanese have not exhausted the strength of solidarity that has kept them pushing for the restoration of the rights of the victims of forced labor,” Yano said.

“The biggest problem right now is that Shinzo Abe is lying to the international community, claiming that workers weren’t mobilized by force and that the South Korean government is violating international law,” said Kim Min-cheol, an analyst with the Center for Historical Truth and Justice. Kim proposed that legal experts, historians, and NGO activists from the two countries jointly draft an opinion paper about the issue of compulsory mobilization and the claims agreement and an essay interpreting the Supreme Court’s ruling last year and submit English translations to international organizations, such as the International Labor Organization. Given the Abe administration and Japanese companies’ refusal to pay reparations, an effective way to pressure them is to bring the international community to a greater awareness that the issue of forced labor is a matter of universal human rights.

While acknowledging that South Korea and Japan’s historical disagreement and economic dispute could drag on and escalate further, activists from the two countries were also optimistic about the prospects. “When the right political conditions and environment are in place, I think that companies will be willing to seek a settlement and accept the South Korean Supreme Court’s decision,” said Yano, noting that Japanese companies implicated in colonial-era crimes, such as Nippon Steel and Nachi-Fujikoshi, had reached settlements with victims of forced labor before.

Others argued that South Korea and Japan should take the court ruling about compensation for forced labor as an opportunity to build a new relationship of trust. “The ruling by South Korea’s Supreme Court doesn’t destroy amity between South Korea and Japan or the foundation of that amity. Acknowledging that the victims of forced labor have the right to claim damages represents progress in human history,” said Yasuto Takeuchi, a historian of Japan’s early modern and modern periods.

“A new relationship between South Korea and Japan will appear on the horizon once we have restored the dignity of the victims of forced labor and brought them justice. Only a serious attempt to take responsibility for the colonial occupation will enable the building of trust between our two countries and, beyond that, the achievement of peace and human rights in Northeast Asia,” Takeuchi said.

Other participants at the conference asserted that reckoning with forced labor should go beyond financial compensation.

“Forced labor clearly constitutes a serious human rights violation under international law. The rights of the victims of forced labor include not only the right to claim damages resulting from illegal behavior but also compensation and restitution as mandated by the international community,” argued Cho Shi-hyeon, a researcher at the Center for Historical Truth and Justice. Cho specified that compensation should also involve the recovery of remains, an official declaration to restore the victims’ dignity, and an official apology that acknowledges the facts and accepts responsibility.

This conference was organized to reflect upon the significance of the Supreme Court’s decision about forced labor and to discuss ways for Koreans and Japanese to achieve solidarity. Among the participants at the conference were Kim Jeong-ju, 88, who was forced to join the Korean Women’s Volunteer Labor Corps and work at a Fujikoshi steel mill in Toyama at the age of 14, and Kim Yong-wha, 90, who was subjected to forced labor at Nippon Steel’s Yahata ironworks after he’d barely managed to finish elementary school.

By Lee Yu-jin, staff reporter

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