In response to the South Korean Supreme Court ruling on wartime labor claims, which effectively denied the 1965 Japan-Korea Claims Agreement, this essay examines the reality of prewar labor migration from the Korean Peninsula, the vast infrastructure assets Japan left behind there, and the estimate that the South Korean portion would amount to 8 trillion yen in present value, arguing for firm countermeasures by Japan.

2019-04-11
There is an estimate that the total assets amounted to about 17 trillion yen, of which the South Korean portion would equal 8 trillion yen in present value.
This figure was calculated from materials from GHQ, the former Imperial Japanese Army, and the Finance and Foreign Ministries.
If the agreement is to be torn up, Japan should present South Korea with a bill for 8 trillion yen.

This is a chapter I published on 2018-11-06 under the title: There Is an Estimate That the Total Assets Amounted to About 17 Trillion Yen, of Which the South Korean Portion Would Equal 8 Trillion Yen in Present Value.
The following is from an article published on page 12 of today’s Sankei Shimbun under the title “South Korea, Stop Acting Spoiled.”
Three years ago, I spoke with Mr. Lee Dae-il, then 64, a former restaurant owner living in Tagawa City, Fukuoka Prefecture.
Mr. Lee’s uncle had worked before the war at the Hojō coal mine in the Chikuhō region.
“My uncle came to Japan under orders from the head of the Korean village in his hometown of Daegu, now in South Korea.
But he said that there were quite a few people from the peninsula who also came of their own will in search of work.”
The Japanese government enacted the National Conscription Ordinance in July 1939.
It was not until September 1944, one year before the end of the war, that peninsular Koreans previously exempted from conscription became subject to it.
Before that, recruitment had been free, arranged through private brokers.
Because the work was dangerous, wages for coal miners were extraordinarily high.
According to Mr. Tatsuo Ueda, then 91, a former cultural properties specialist in Hojō Town, in 1920, when one bale of rice, 60 kilograms, cost 12 yen, the average monthly wage of a coal miner was 37 yen and 77 sen.
One bale of rice is the amount an adult man consumes in one year.
That means they were receiving the equivalent of three years’ worth of rice in a single month.
I looked back over my interview notes because, predictable though it was, the South Korean Supreme Court had committed an act of folly.
It was the lawsuit brought by four South Koreans against Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal.
None of them had been conscripted.
They came to the Japanese mainland of their own will in response to recruitment, seeking high incomes.
Yet the court fully accepted the claims of these four men, who were demanding not unpaid wages but consolation money.
This amounted to denying the 1965 Japan-Korea Claims Agreement, which explicitly stated that the matter had been settled completely and finally.
It could even lead to the seizure of Japanese corporate assets.
As for Japan’s response, if it consists only of filing a case with the International Court of Justice, which requires the consent of the opposing state, and repeatedly expressing “regret,” that would be little different from doing nothing at all.
Japan should consider economic sanctions and entry restrictions, such as restoring visa requirements.
Japan paid South Korea a total of 500 million dollars in grants and loans.
It also relinquished all the infrastructure left on the Korean Peninsula, including roads, ports, railways, and hydroelectric power plants.
There is an estimate that the total assets amounted to about 17 trillion yen, of which the South Korean portion would equal 8 trillion yen in present value.
This figure was calculated from materials from GHQ, the former Imperial Japanese Army, and the Finance and Foreign Ministries.
If the agreement is to be torn up, Japan should present South Korea with a bill for 8 trillion yen.
The patience of the Japanese people is wearing thin.
South Korea must stop depending on Japan forever.
Rui Sasaki, Deputy Editorial Writer.