The photographs cited were from a different era, predating Japan’s wartime labor ordinances, and wages were paid to workers from the Korean Peninsula from 1939 onward.
Outstanding claims were fully and finally settled under the Japan–ROK Basic Treaty, exposing the allegations as unfounded.

2016-04-04
The following continues from the previous chapter.
All emphases in the text and the portions marked with asterisks are mine.
It has been confirmed that photographs entirely unrelated to the matter were deliberately reproduced in an attempt to obstruct the registration of twenty-three facilities proposed by the Japanese government as World Cultural Heritage sites.
The booklet claimed that fifty-seven thousand people from the Korean Peninsula were conscripted as “forced labor.”
However, the photographs depicted events that occurred prior to the National Conscription Ordinance under the National Mobilization Law of 1939.
Not only were they from a different era, but with regard specifically to workers from the Korean Peninsula, wages were paid from the 1939 implementation onward.
Issues such as unpaid wages were fully and finally settled under the 1965 Japan–Republic of Korea Basic Treaty, which included a waiver of property claims—this remains Japan’s position.
By contrast, a booklet produced by a truth-finding committee of South Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs asserted that “Japan shows no self-reflection and practices historical revisionism,”
and advanced false accusations against Japan on the unrelated comfort women issue, claiming that “many women were deceived and abducted.”
Another booklet criticized Shōka Sonjuku in Yamaguchi–Hagi and declared that Yoshida Shōin, a Chōshū domain figure, had “led Japanese imperialism toward the Korean Peninsula.”
Recently, I described the circumstances surrounding the collision accident during pre-performance practice involving figure skater Yuzuru Hanyu.
Although I had sensed danger during the short program and was reading during the free-skate practice,
a cry of terror from a friend watching with me allowed me to grasp the situation instantly.
In that essay, through a question-and-answer format, I concluded that “unless one is insane…”
and that “Koreans raised under what is called anti-Japanese education—Nazism continuing even seventy years after the war—are indeed deranged.”
The final part of this article fully substantiates that conclusion.