Yang Geum-deok (L) and Kim Seong-joo, South Korean victims of Japan’s wartime forced labor, hold a news conference at the National Assembly in Seoul on March 7, 2023, denouncing the government’s proposed plan to compensate such victims through a Seoul-backed public foundation, instead of direct payments from responsible Japanese firms. (Yonhap)
SEOUL, March 13 (Korea Bizwire) — Surviving Korean victims of wartime forced labor delivered their formal position to reject the government’s compensation plan to a public foundation in charge of the controversial process, according to their legal representatives Monday.
They are among those who won compensation cases against Japanese companies at South Korea’s Supreme Court over their forced labor during World War II, when Korea was under Japan’s brutal colonial rule.
Two victims — Yang Geum-deok and Kim Seong-joo — delivered an official document on their stance to the Foundation for Victims of Forced Mobilization. Under the 2018 ruling, Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. should pay them compensation.
The Yoon Suk Yeol administration, however, announced a third-party reimbursement plan to pay them through funds donated to the Seoul-based foundation.
Separately, the legal representative of Lee Chun-sik, a surviving plaintiff forced to work under Nippon Steel Corp., also delivered a similar document to the foundation.
Lee’s representative said the document was delivered to explicitly express his position and to be kept as “evidence” of his objection against the government’s third-party reimbursement plan.
Japan claims that all reparations were settled under a 1965 treaty that normalized bilateral ties.
(Yonhap)
