Nearly a year's worth of forced labour in Japan during World War II earned seven South Korean women a mere dollar each, causing consternation among activists in South Korea. The payouts of 99 yen (1.08 dollars) by the Japanese government mark the end of a legal suit filed in 1998 by eight former slave workers or their descendants.
One of the women died in 1944, and thus Japan deemed her descendants ineligible for payment. But while the Japanese government may consider the matter closed, that is hardly the case, according to South Korean activists and the government. "The Japanese government made a fool of us," one plaintiff was quoted by Japan's Asahi Shimbun newspaper as saying.
"It is really, really stupid that the Japanese government paid only 99 yen for work done 50 or 60 years ago," said Dr Chung Chin Sung, an advisory committee member of the Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan. "During that time the overall value of the women's wages increased 50 or 60 times."
Chung has worked since 1990 on the behalf of South Korean women pressed into sexual slavery or forced labour by Japan during World War II. "Of course more has to be done," she said. A Foreign Ministry spokesman gave a more measured response to the news. "The Korean government expects the Japanese government to deal with the history issue causing the current tension seriously and in earnest," he said, without elaborating further.
Under Japanese colonial rule from 1910-45, thousands of Koreans were forced into labour to support the war effort, from working in coal mines to serving as sex slaves for the military. As teenagers, the eight original plaintiffs were among 138 women from the South Jeolla Province area in South Korea sent to work at Mitsubishi Heavy Industries from October 1944 to August 1945, Asahi Shimbun said.
Japan's Social Insurance Agency, responsible for the pension payments, spent 11 years processing the case, saying it was locating records of the women's employment. After determining in September that the seven surviving women were entitled to a pension, the SIA deposited the 99-yen pensions into the plaintiffs' bank accounts, based on calculations by the local government in Aichi Prefecture, where the Mitsubishi plant was located.
Masayoshi Sano, an official at the SIA, declined to comment on the reason for the long delay because those civil servants who had previously worked on the issue were no longer in charge. The amount of the payment was calculated according to the nation's Employees' Pension Insurance Act, he said. "Until now, the Japanese government always argued that through the 1952 San Francisco treaty and the bilateral treaty between Korea and Japan in 1965, legal matters were all settled," Chung said.
The 1952 treaty with the Allied powers provided compensation to Allied civilians and prisoners of war, while the 1965 agreement established basic diplomatic ties between the two countries, including what Tokyo says is remuneration for unpaid wages to forced labourers. "At least this time they admitted that they have legal responsibility," she said. "Now they have to calculate the appropriate amount of money they should pay," taking into account current inflation.
But the SIA said the welfare pension law that determined the pensions did not stipulate any adjustments for inflation, the South Korean Dong-A Ilbo newspaper reported. Dr Han Seung Mi, a professor of Japanese studies at Seoul-based Yonsei University, added that the issue goes beyond monetary value. "The amount of money may be what people talk about, but what's really important goes deeper than that," she said.
"There was an attempt by Japanese civic groups to compensate these women who went through all this suffering, but the women refused because what they wanted was a sincere apology from the government. I don't think this is enough for the women," Han added.
"This clearly shows that Japan has not been able to atone for its wartime aggression at all," said Kang Duk Sang, professor emeritus at the University of Shiga Prefecture and the director of the History Museum of J-Koreans (ethnic Koreans in Japan), said.
The Japanese government "lacks moral principle," he added. The payments also come at an important time in the two countries' relations, as 2010 marks the 100th anniversary of Japan's annexation of Korea. Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama had told South Korean President Lee Myung Bak that he, unlike his predecessors, had the courage to address their countries' painful history. Lee had also previously expressed his desire for the Japanese emperor to visit South Korea.