North Korea has told Japan it could raise the subject of wartime forced labor during Tokyo’s occupation of the Korean Peninsula in any future bilateral…
North Korea has told Japan it could raise the subject of wartime forced labor during Tokyo’s occupation of the Korean Peninsula in any future bilateral talks, diplomatic sources have said.
The wartime labor issue has been the source of heightened tensions between Tokyo and Seoul after South Korea’s top court last year ordered several Japanese companies to compensate South Korean workers for forced labor.
Japan has refused to comply with the ruling based on its stance that the matter of compensation for wartime labor was resolved under a 1965 agreement that normalized relations with South Korea. Pyongyang has repeatedly criticized this stance in state-run media.
Japan colonized the Korean Peninsula from 1910 until the end of World War II in 1945.
According to the sources, North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho warned his Japanese counterpart, Taro Kono, via a Mongolian diplomat in mid-December, that he would have “no choice” but to bring up the matter if Tokyo insists on pursuing the issue of Pyongyang’s abductions of Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 1980s.
Japan is unlikely to back down on the abduction issue, which Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has said is a top priority.
