Japan and South Korea will try to keep a row over World War II forced laborers from spiraling into a crisis, after a court ruling forced the U. S. allies to confront hardening public opinion and divergent views of history. South Korea’s top court ruled on Tuesday that Japan
Japan and South Korea will try to keep a row over World War II forced laborers from spiraling into a crisis, after a court ruling forced the U. S. allies to confront hardening public opinion and divergent views of history.
South Korea’s top court ruled on Tuesday that Japan’s Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corp. must compensate four South Koreans for their wartime forced labor, a binding verdict Japan denounced as “unthinkable” while expressing hope it would not hurt the uneasy neighbors’ cooperation on North Korea.
South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha and her Japanese counterpart, Taro Kono, stressed in a Wednesday telephone call the need to keep cooperating “for the future oriented development of the relationship”, South Korea’s foreign ministry said.
The two countries need to cooperate to rein in North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs, and they also have close business ties. Japanese firms invested $1.84 billion in South Korea last year, its second largest foreign investor, Korean data show.
But relations have long been plagued by the legacy of Japan’s 1910-45 colonization of the peninsula and the war, including the matter of “comfort women”, a euphemism for girls and women forced to work in Japanese wartime military brothels.
“The sentiments of compromise are in short supply in both countries,” said Jeffrey Kingston, director of Asia studies at Temple University’s Japan campus.
“Basically, across the political spectrum, Koreans feel Japan has inadequately addressed the wounds of the past,” he said.
“Japan feels it has already resolved the issue legally and they don’t want to show flexibility because it would open up a Pandora’s box of claims” against other Japanese firms.
