This essay shows in concrete terms how extensively Japan carried out its postwar settlement through the 1965 Japan–South Korea Basic Treaty, including grants, loans, private-sector credit, and the waiver of massive prewar Japanese assets left on the Korean Peninsula.
It argues that the South Korean government failed to fully inform its people of the treaty’s substance and diverted the funds to national development rather than individual compensation, thereby reexamining one of the core roots of the perception gap between Japan and South Korea.

2019-07-10
Moreover, the total sum of 800 million dollars, combining grant and loan aid, amounted to 2.3 times South Korea’s national budget at the time, showing how enormous it was.
On November 22, 2018, a message arrived on my smartphone saying that the chapter I had published on Ameba under the title, “Furthermore, Japan Waived the Assets It Left in Prewar Korea. This, as in the case when India became independent from Britain, when British people’s assets,” had ranked within the top 100 in the official hashtag rankings for India and Germany.
This was a chapter I published on July 25, 2018.
Emphasis in the text is mine.
The following is a continuation of the previous chapter.
◆Originally, Japan Had No Duty to Apologize to South Korea Nor Any Responsibility to Pay It Money.
http://ccce.web.fc2.com/imgk/oda.html
South Korea was not a victim but a perpetrator that cooperated in Japan’s war.
Even by international standards, this was an exception among exceptions, in that everything from state reparations to individual compensation was settled finally and completely by the Japan–South Korea Basic Treaty.
(Article 2, Paragraph 1 of the Agreement)
Japan–South Korea Basic Treaty.
Under the 1965 Japan–South Korea Basic Treaty, Japan paid 300 million dollars in grants, 200 million dollars in loans, and 300 million dollars in private-sector credit.
That totals 800 million dollars.
Since this amount was calculated in the value of that time, let us convert its monetary value into that of the present day.
Also, let us focus only on the 300 million dollars of the 800 million that consisted of grant aid.
• (Converted into yen) 300 million dollars × 360 yen (at that time 1 dollar = 360 yen) = 108 billion yen.
• (Converted by prices) 108 billion yen × 10 (the starting salary of a university graduate at that time was about 20,000 yen) = 1.08 trillion yen.
If this is divided, exactly as South Korea claims, among a total of 900,000 compensation claimants consisting of 700,000 forcibly mobilized laborers and 200,000 wartime comfort women
(Of course, there are arguments that forced mobilization and wartime comfort women in the way claimed by South Korea did not in fact exist, but here I calculate using figures that accept South Korea’s claims 100 percent.)
• (Per alleged victim of forced conscription) 1.08 trillion yen ÷ 900,000 people = 1.2 million yen per person.
Now we have an amount that can be compared.
The next question is whether this was high or not.
One often hears people and newspaper companies say that Germany provided sufficient compensation after the war.
So let us use Germany as the reference.
Germany’s compensation for forced laborers, converted into present value, was 300,000 to 800,000 yen,
and even in the case of Jewish slave laborers, the highest amount was 800,000 yen.
Even from an objective standpoint, this shows that Japan’s postwar reparations toward South Korea were at a very high level.
Moreover, the total sum of 800 million dollars, combining grants and loans, amounted to 2.3 times South Korea’s national budget at the time, showing how enormous it was.
Incidentally, this reparations amount covered the entire Korean Peninsula, and it was the sum that the South Korean government took by saying, “If we unify with North Korea, we will pay the people in the North as well, so give us the North’s share too.”
Furthermore, Japan waived the assets it had left in prewar Korea.
This was an act fully valid as postwar compensation, just as there is the precedent that when India became independent from Britain, the personal assets that British people possessed in India were returned to those individuals.
What is astonishing is the size of that amount.
According to a survey by the Civil Property Custodian of the General Headquarters, excluding military assets, it totaled 5.3 billion dollars.
(Shōwa Fiscal History Office, Ministry of Finance, ed., Shōwa Fiscal History: From the End of the War to the Peace Treaty, Toyo Keizai Inc.)
In other words, Japan carried out enormous compensation toward South Korea amounting to 5.3 billion dollars in prewar assets and 800 million dollars in postwar reparations.
And in the Japan–South Korea Basic Treaty, the following words are recorded.
“It is confirmed that the problems concerning property, rights, and interests, and claims between the two Contracting Parties and their nationals, including those provided for in Article IV(a) of the Treaty of Peace with Japan signed at the city of San Francisco on September 8, 1951, are settled completely and finally.”
(Article 2, Paragraph 1 of the Agreement)
However, after the treaty was concluded, South Korea did not pay Japan’s settlement funds to the individual compensation claimants, but instead used them for national development.
There can be little doubt that the economic growth of South Korea called the “Miracle on the Han River,” along with the efforts of the Korean people themselves, was driven by these settlement funds paid with both North and South Korea in mind.
And astonishingly, the South Korean government has not informed its people of this treaty.
Was it to conceal the fact that it diverted the money to national development instead of paying individuals?
Or was it to keep stirring up anti-Japanese sentiment forever?
Or both?
As a result, South Koreans still believe that Japan has not fulfilled its compensation responsibilities, grow indignant, and file lawsuits in Japan over compensation issues that were already settled, and one of the great gaps between Japan and South Korea lies precisely there.
I believe that not only the South Korean people but Japanese people as well need to know this thoroughly.
http://blog.livedoor.jp/lancer1/archives/11256231.html
http://koreaphoto.hp.infoseek.co.jp/compensation.html
To be continued.