South Korea and Japan maintain tense relations over the reparations and apologies that South Korean victims demand from Japanese companies and the Japanese government for the violence committed during the colonization of the country between 1910 and 1945. While the South Korean authorities Korean companies have unveiled a plan to compensate the victims, some refuse and demand an apology from the Japanese authorities and companies.
With our correspondent in Seoul, Nicholas Rocca
The South Korean government, which wants to close historic disagreements between the two countries to improve its relations with Tokyo, unveiled a compensation plan for victims last month. It offers funding through a national public foundation, without forcing Japanese companies to pay.
A decision far from unanimous among victims like Yang Geum-deok.
At 94, a big red hat screwed on her head, she still remembers the day her teacher asked her to go to Japan to study. At the age of 14, she left her native country, but not to go to college. Yang Geum-deok says she was forced into forced labor in an aircraft factory.
” One hundred and thirty-eight women from my province of Jeolla were forced like me to go to Japan, to work at the Mitsubishi plant in Nagoya, she recalls. I did not have the slightest chance to study, I worked almost until my death and when I returned home, I had not received any salary for my work. »
Funding via a national public foundation
Eight decades later, the wounds of the past have still not healed. The South Korean Supreme Court forced Mitsubishi to pay it in 2018, but the Japanese company refuses to pay.
“ I want to receive an apology from my attackers before I die, continues Yang Geum-deok. What I have been through so far is unfair, and why is Mitsubishi who forced me to work and stopped me from studying, still making me work? All I want now is a sincere apology. »
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