Written on June 25, 2019, this passage examines the South Korean “forced labor” lawsuits, the premise of “illegal colonial rule” embedded in the ruling, and the actual role played by the law firm Haemaru.
It shows how a Korean claim that failed to gain support at international conferences was carried into a domestic court ruling.
It also reveals the ideological and personal network behind the case by tracing the ties between Haemaru’s leading attorney, the Japanese left, and anti-Japan activism including the Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal.

2019-06-25
However, the fact that Haemaru’s representative attorney had been connected with the Japanese left for about twenty years is an important point in interpreting this lawsuit.

This is a chapter I published on 2018-12-20 under the title, “Illegal colonial rule”—that is the premise of this ruling. The fact that a claim that failed to gain consent from abroad was made the premise of the judgment is, rather than a uniquely Korean decision,
As I have mentioned many times, the monthly magazines Hanada and WiLL, released today, are must-read books for all Japanese citizens.
Even if one subscribes regularly to these two magazines together with Seiron and Voice, the total is still far cheaper than the monthly subscription fee for the Asahi Shimbun.
These monthly magazines are packed with genuine essays.
By contrast, as even one of its own court scholars has criticized, the Asahi Shimbun is a newspaper whose pages are at the level of kindergarten children.
Such is the true state of outlets like the Asahi Shimbun, which has continued to demean Japan with reporting so self-tormenting in its historical view that one might mistake it for an agent of China or the Korean Peninsula, and of NHK and similar organizations that have built news programs on that basis.
The Asahi Shimbun reported to the world as fact Katsuichi Honda’s Nanjing Massacre reporting, which Honda himself admitted was based on visiting places arranged by the Chinese government and writing exactly what the materials handed to him by the Chinese government said.
The Asahi Shimbun also gave major coverage as fact to such reports as Takashi Uemura’s comfort-women reporting and the fabricated coral-reef story.
Uemura had married the daughter of a woman who was one of South Korea’s strongest North Korea sympathizers, a matter that probably arose during the Asahi Shimbun’s customary in-house study program at Yonsei University.
The so-called “Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal,” perhaps the greatest farce in history.
NHK gleefully broadcast that event, organized by Yayori Matsui, the mother-in-law of Takashi Uemura, North Korean spies, and Alexis Dudden.
And the Asahi Shimbun has reported unbelievable fake news as fact, including, among other things, the fabricated reporting by reporter Masakazu Honda in connection with that event.
To subscribe to the Asahi Shimbun is to be forced to read, to one’s utter disgust, the commentaries of pseudo-moralists such as Kenzaburō Ōe.
In complete contrast, subscribing to the above monthly magazines enables one to know the truth of things—that is, to read genuine essays by genuine journalists and genuine scholars.
Today’s issue of Hanada is entirely filled with must-read essays as well, but in particular, the essay by nonfiction writer Choi Seok-young titled “The ‘Forced Labor’ Legal Team and the Japanese Communist Party” is surely one that all Japanese citizens must read.
From * to * is mine.
The forces that “led” the trial.
In 2001, the “International Conference for Reconsidering the Annexation of Korea,” attended by specialists from Japan, Korea, Europe, and the United States, was held three times in Hawaii, Tokyo, and Boston.
At the third conference, the participants included Professor Yi Tae-jin of Seoul National University, Professor Yi Geun-gwan of Seoul Human University from Korea, Professor Kang Seong-eun of Korea University as a representative of Zainichi Koreans, Professor Norikatsu Sasakawa of International Christian University and Professor Fukuju Unno of Meiji University from Japan, and from Europe and America such noted scholars as Professor John W. Dower of MIT and Professor James Crawford of Cambridge University.
(North Korean scholars also participated in the first Hawaii conference, but were absent from the third Boston conference due to the effects of the 9/11 attacks).
This conference was actively promoted by Korea in order to arrive at, and publicize to the world, the conclusion that “the annexation of Korea was illegal and unlawful.”
It had aimed to create an opportunity to have the illegality of the annexation internationally recognized, but that design failed.
Not only Japan, but also European and American specialists, did not agree with Korea’s claim that the annexation of Korea by Japan was illegal or that the annexation treaty was invalid.
Before the conference, the Korean media had placed great hopes on it and devoted significant space to it, but faced with the unexpected outcome, they ultimately introduced only brief toned-down articles.
Contrary to its original purpose, this conference ended up proving the great gap in perception between Korea and the outside world.
Yet Korea resolutely maintained this “illegality theory,” applied it to the current Nippon Steel lawsuit, and engraved it into the judgment.
“Illegal colonial rule”—that is the premise of this ruling.
The fact that a claim that failed to gain consent from abroad was made the premise of the judgment seems less a uniquely Korean decision than an attitude of ignoring overseas opinion and going its own way.
What the Japanese people must never forget, however, is that among those who jointly signed the laughable opinion paper agreeing with this “illegal colonial rule,” which failed to gain consent even from overseas, were University of Tokyo professor Haruki Wada and Kenzaburō Ōe.
From the start, there was absolutely no intention of referring the matter to the International Court of Justice or of listening to the views of international society.
In Japan as well, much attention has already been paid to such matters as the backgrounds of the plaintiffs who had work experience at Nippon Steel, interpretations of the ruling, the position of the Korean government, and Korean public opinion, and various reports have been made.
Accordingly, in this essay I would like to turn my attention to another core part of this series of events, namely the plaintiff-side law firm that has in effect “led” the trial, the organizations to which they belong, and the pipeline connected from there.
The law firm “Haemaru.”
The entity persistently waging litigation on behalf of the plaintiffs in the Nippon Steel case is the Seoul-based law firm Haemaru.
Haemaru is a mid-sized law firm established in 1992 mainly by liberal lawyers such as Cheon Jeong-bae and Lim Jong-in.
There are currently a little more than twenty lawyers affiliated with it, and among them are a number of people with noteworthy backgrounds.
The most famous person among lawyers from Haemaru is probably former President Roh Moo-hyun.
Before becoming president, Roh, who had been active in the Busan area as a “human rights lawyer” together with Moon Jae-in and others, ran in the 1992 National Assembly election but lost.
From 1993 to 1998, during his years in political limbo, he worked as a lawyer at Haemaru.
He came to be connected with Haemaru when, after tasting the bitterness of defeat and sinking into dejection, attorney Cheon Jeong-bae, a fellow lawyer and supporter, urged him to join the firm.
(Cheon Jeong-bae was later appointed Minister of Justice under the Roh Moo-hyun administration).
Haemaru is a law firm that has an image of being strong in “international litigation,” such as handling compensation suits against Japanese companies, but when one observes this organization anew, one can see “pipes” to Japan that had previously gone unnoticed.
The first person to note is Jang Wan-ik, who as Haemaru’s representative attorney effectively led the forced labor lawsuits.
He joined Haemaru in 1993, and from around 1994 became known as a lawyer handling the work of the Korean civic group “The Korean Council” supporting comfort women in Korea.
In 2000 he was involved in litigation related to Japan, including the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries case, and in 2005 the forced labor suits against Nippon Steel and Nachi-Fujikoshi.
However, the occasion on which his name became known in Japan as well was probably the “Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal,” held in Tokyo in 2000 and hosted by the Violence Against Women in War Network Japan (VAWW-NET Japan).
At that tribunal, he served as a prosecutor on the Korean side.
This tribunal was a kind of mock court, in other words a “courtroom event,” in which civic groups, human-rights lawyers, and scholars from Korea, North Korea, Japan, China, Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia, and other places formed a prosecutorial team and rendered a verdict on whether Japan was guilty or not guilty in the Pacific War.
The representative attorney and Han Tong-ryeon.
If one says that his participation in this mock tribunal was natural, that would indeed be natural.
That is because the event was organized by former Asahi Shimbun reporter Yayori Matsui and Yun Jeong-ok of Korea, who had been the former head of the Korean Council.
It is rather “natural” that the lawyer of the Korean Council would participate in an event hosted by the chair of the Korean Council.
In the tribunal, the solidarity forces of each country found the Emperor and the Japanese state guilty of “crimes against humanity with respect to rape and the system of sexual slavery.”
Legally it was a “mock trial” with no effect whatsoever, but at the very least it was a trial that succeeded in powerfully imprinting in Korea the image that “Japan = war criminal.”
Jang Wan-ik, who had participated as a prosecutor in such a left-wing “festival,” is now devoting himself to activities as the “Chairman of the Special Investigation Committee on Social Disasters,” having been appointed by the Moon Jae-in administration, and has left the practical conduct of the Nippon Steel lawsuit, which he had led until then, to younger lawyers at Haemaru, withdrawing from the front stage of the litigation.
However, the fact that Haemaru’s representative attorney had been connected with the Japanese left for about twenty years is an important point in interpreting this lawsuit.
This section will continue.