Sex slaves, forced labour: Why S Korea, Japan ties remain tense

Sex slaves, forced labour: Why S Korea, Japan ties remain tense

Historical feuds over wartime abuses threaten to derail South Korea-Japan relations as North Korea steps up its nuclear and missiles programme.


?resize=770%2C513
Members of a conservative civic group chant slogans during an anti-Japan protest in Seoul, South Korea, August 13, 2019.
South Koreans call for a boycott of Japanese goods at a protest in Seoul, South Korea, on August 13, 2019 [File: Kim Hong-Ji/ Reuters]
By Zaheena Rasheed
Published On 15 Sep 202215 Sep 2022

Pressure is growing on Japan and South Korea to resolve their historical feuds, with Seoul’s top court set to examine a case that could see the assets of some Japanese firms sold off to compensate Korean wartime labourers. The case is one of dozens that South Koreans have lodged against Japan, which colonised the Korean peninsula from 1910 – 1945, seeking reparations for forced labour and sexual slavery in Japanese military brothels during World War II. The South Korean Supreme Court, in a series of landmark rulings in 2018, has already ordered Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Nippon Steel to compensate some 14 former workers for their brutal treatment and unpaid labour.

Many of them are now in their 90s, and several have died since the rulings without seeing any compensation. “I cannot pass away before receiving an apology from Japan,” one of the former labourers, Yang Geum-deok, wrote in a recent letter to the South Korean government. The 93 year old, who was sent to work at a Mitsubishi aircraft factory in 1944, when she was 14, said the Japanese company “needs to apologise and turn over the money”. But both Mitsubishi Heavy and Nippon Steel have refused to comply with the rulings, with the Japanese government insisting the issue has been settled in past bilateral agreements.

?w=770&resize=770%2C513
Lee Choon-shik, a victim of wartime forced labour during the Japanese colonial period, holds a banner that reads ‘Apologise for forced labour and fulfil the compensation’ during an anti-Japan protest on Liberation Day in Seoul, South Korea, on August 15, 2019 [File: Kim Hong-Ji/ Reuters]


?w=770&resize=770%2C513
Students hold portraits of deceased former South Korean sex slaves during an anti-Japan rally in Seoul, South Korea, on August 15, 2018 [File: Kim Hong-Ji/ Reuters]

The South Korean Supreme Court is now set to deliberate on a lower court ruling that ordered the liquidation of some of Mitusbishi Heavy Industries’ assets, and experts are urging Seoul and Tokyo to reach a resolution before a verdict is announced. They say the long-running feuds could threaten security cooperation between the two neighbours at a time when North Korea has warned of preemptive nuclear strikes and launched an unprecedented number of missiles and weapons tests. The stakes are high for the United States, too. For Washington, which has military bases and troops in both countries, the feuds undermine its efforts to build an Indo-Pacific alliance to counter China’s growing global influence. Japan and South Korea have “got to avert the impending Sword of Damocles,” said Daniel Sneider, lecturer in East Asian Studies at Stanford University in the US. “If the court moves ahead to seize the assets of Japanese companies, then everything breaks down,” he said, with potentially “tragic” consequences for global trade, as well as the US’s ability to defend its two allies in the event of a North Korean attack.

As calls grow for a settlement, here’s a look at the history behind the bitter feuds and why they seem so intractable.

‘Comfort women’

Japan and Korea share a long history of rivalry and war. The Japanese have repeatedly tried to invade the Korean peninsula, and succeeded in annexing and colonising it in 1910. During World War II, Japanese authorities forced tens of thousands of Koreans to work in factories and mines and sent women and girls into military brothels. A United Nations expert, in a 1996 report, said some 200,000 Korean “comfort women” were forced into a system of “military sexual slavery” and called the abuses “crimes against humanity”.After Japan’s rule of Korea ended in 1945, the peninsula was split along the 38th parallel, with rival governments taking power in Pyongyang and Seoul. The US, which backed the government in Seoul, lobbied it for better relations with Tokyo. And after 14 years of secretive negotiations, South Korea and Japan in 1965 signed a treaty normalising relations. Under that deal, Japan agreed to provide South Korea with $500m in grants and loans and any issues concerning property, rights and interests of the two countries and their peoples were considered to “have been settled completely and finally”. But the agreement set off mass protests in South Korea, with the opposition and student demonstrators accusing then-President Park Chung-hee of “selling away the country” for a “paltry sum”. The government imposed martial law to quash the nationwide demonstrations and went on to use the Japanese funds to kick-start South Korea’s development, including by building highways and a steel factory.



Grievances over the issue of forced labour and sexual slavery continued to fester, however.