Japan to hand over payroll records on forced Korean laborers

By Shin Hae-in
SEOUL, Jan. 7 (Yonhap) -- Japan has agreed to hand over to South Korea records of
over 200,000 Korean civilians who never got paid after forcedly working for
private Japanese firms during World War II, a Japanese vernacular daily said
Thursday.
The Japanese government agreed, after years of refusal, to send the records
dating back more than six decades when some 5.4 million Koreans were conscripted
to work in the Japanese army, as well as factories and mines in mainland Japan
and its colonial territories.
The upcoming document, to be sent to the Korean government by March, contains
records of about 200 million yen, or US$2.2 million, of overdue wages belonging
to more than 200,000 living and deceased Korean laborers, according to the Asahi
Shimbun's Thursday edition.
It is the first time for Japan to release records on Koreans who worked at
private Japanese firms. In 2007, the Japanese government sent Seoul payment
records on Koreans who had worked for the Japanese army.
To tackle labor shortages as a result of over-drafting of its men for the
military during World War II, Japan organized official recruitment of Koreans to
work in its mainland beginning in 1939, when Korea was under its colonial rule.
As the labor shortage increased, by 1942, the Japanese authorities extended the
provisions of its mobilization law to include involuntary conscription of Korean
workers for factories and mines on the Korean Peninsula and Manchukuo.
In 1945, hundreds of thousands of conscripted Korean laborers in Japan abandoned
their jobs and returned to Korea.
Defining the remaining 600,000 Koreans -- many of whom were long-time residents
or had been born in Japan -- as foreigners, Japanese authorities began to limit
their citizenship rights, causing diplomatic tension with Seoul.
South Korea normalized diplomatic ties with Japan through a 1965 accord with the
signing of a treaty on basic relations and supplementary agreements involving
property claims, fishing rights, the legal rights of Koreans in Japan and
economic cooperation.
The accord, however, has been a stumbling block for South Koreans seeking
compensation from the Japanese government for its colonial rule of the peninsula.

Japan claims it is under no obligation to pay the forced Korean laborers as it
has paid $500 million to Seoul back in 1965 and satisfied all compensation
claims. Most of the money was put towards the development of South Korean steel
companies.
Seoul has often maintained an ambiguous position on the issue and began in 2008
to compensate forced Korean laborers and their families out of its own pocket.
About 7,182 are currently being paid government compensation, with the number
expected to increase with the new records to be sent by Japan.
hayney@yna.co.kr
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