Japan's companies might want to compensate victims: Expert

The Japanese companies involved in the ongoing legal row with Korea over the forced labor issue may actually want to compensate the victims, said a security expert from Tokyo attending the Asan Plenum in Seoul on Tuesday...

Ken Jimbo, professor of international security at Keio University in Tokyo, speaks with the press at the Asan Plenum 2023 in Seoul on Tuesday. [PARK SANG-MOON]

The Japanese companies involved in the ongoing legal row with Korea over the forced labor issue may actually want to compensate the victims, said a security expert from Tokyo attending the Asan Plenum in Seoul on Tuesday.

“They want the problems to be solved and continue to keep their business in motion,” said Ken Jimbo, professor of international security at Keio University in Tokyo. “But the government would not allow them to take a private position, to take initiative on this, even though, for example, Mitsubishi might want to take their own measures.”

Jimbo, speaking with a group of reporters on the sideline of the Asan Plenum 2023 in Seoul on Tuesday, was responding to a question on whether the Japanese companies could eventually pitch into the fund Korea created to resolve the forced labor issue.

What’s stopping these companies is the political ramifications, said the expert.

“Japanese parliamentary members are very legally oriented, and for them, this is a matter of principle regarding the 1965 agreement,” said Jimbo, referring to the normalization treaty between Japan and Korea signed 20 years after Korea's liberation from Japanese colonial rule.

Wartime forced labor and sexual slavery are among the major issues stemming from Japan's colonial rule over Korea from 1910 to 1945, repeatedly leading to diplomatic spats between the two countries.

The 1965 normalization treaty between Japan and Korea saw Japan give Korea $300 million in economic aid and $500 million in loans. Japan claims that all compensation issues related to its colonial rule were resolved by the 1965 treaty.

However, Supreme Court rulings in Korea in 2018 demanded that two Japanese companies, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal, compensate 15 Korean forced labor victims and their relatives. In the ruling, the top court argued that the treaty did not extinguish individual compensation claims.

Japan protested, and the drawn-out legal case soured bilateral relations for years until the Yoon Suk Yeol government recently proposed to Tokyo a resolution by way of third-party compensation.

Though unpopular at home, the proposal won him a ticket to a summit meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in Tokyo last month, the first of its kind in 12 years, and has won praise from policymakers in Washington as a courageous move.

It remains to be seen if the good vibes between the two leaders early on in both administrations will lead to closer security ties, a topic of increasing interest from Washington in light of rising tensions in the Taiwan Strait and the Korean Peninsula.

“If China extends its operation in Taiwan and the United States decides to engage in the conflict, then from where will the United States dispatch its forces? Those would be Okinawa, Kadena, Yokosuka and Iwakuni. So, if China is serious in conducting anti-access operations against the United States, its first thought would be to strike directly at U.S. bases in Japan.”

Japan has been reforming its national security apparatus in recent years to be less defense-oriented, even developing "counterstrike capabilities” that would allow Japan to strike at missile launch sites in North Korea.

Counterattacks by Japan of targets on the peninsula could potentially be seen as a hostile act by South Korea given the wording of its constitution, whereby the entire Korean Peninsula is seen as sovereign territory.

Developing a trilateral security apparatus by which Japan could coordinate its defense moves with Korea in a regional emergency could help, though whether such a mechanism can be attained within Kishida, Yoon and Biden’s administrations is less certain.

“Japan needs to understand that whenever Japan tries to have a more robust operation in a Korean contingency scenario, it has ramifications for South Korea, and Korea needs to understand where Japan is coming from in its self-defense rules,” said Jimbo.

BY ESTHER CHUNG [chung.juhee@joongang.co.kr]