Quoting a front-page column by Yoshiko Sakurai in the Sankei Shimbun, this essay analyzes the political background of South Korea’s Supreme Court ruling on wartime labor compensation.
It argues that the Moon Jae-in administration’s policies, the transformation of South Korea’s judiciary, and the involvement of certain Japanese intellectuals have shaped the dispute, and calls for a firm response by Japan and its corporations.

February 10, 2019.
Among them, I deeply despise Kenzaburō Ōe and Haruki Murakami as profoundly as the depth of Japan’s beautiful seas and the height of its mountains.
For they are literally traitors to the nation and enemies of the state.
A chapter published on November 6, 2018, titled “Many people, including Professor Emeritus Haruki Wada of the University of Tokyo and a former deputy editorial writer of the Asahi Shimbun, signed the statement,” is now overwhelmingly ranked number one in Ameba’s search results.
The following is from an article by Yoshiko Sakurai published yesterday on the front page of the Sankei Shimbun.
On October 30, the Supreme Court of South Korea ordered Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal (formerly Nippon Steel) to pay four hundred million won (approximately forty million yen) in damages to four former wartime laborers.
Article 2 of the 1965 Japan–South Korea Claims and Economic Cooperation Agreement confirms that the issue of claims between the two countries and their nationals, including corporations, was “settled completely and finally.”
It states that all claims issues, both individual and corporate, have already been resolved.
At the time, the Japanese government, leaving nothing to chance, also exchanged official minutes between the two countries.
Within those minutes are eight explanations regarding claims.
They include unpaid wages and compensation for wartime laborers, making it doubly and triply clear that the matter has been settled.
It was therefore natural that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe immediately stated after the ruling, “This is a judgment that is impossible under international law.”
The Prime Minister also avoided using the term “forced laborers” and referred to the four individuals as “workers from the former Korean Peninsula.”
This was an important point, sharply exposing the dubiousness of the Moon Jae-in administration, which attempts to call black white.
The many abnormal developments unfolding under the Moon administration would be unimaginable in a normal state governed by the rule of law.
These events suggest that South Korea is in the midst of a socialist revolution.
Revolutionary forces destroy the entire order that existed before them.
Treaties, contracts, and common sense are discarded like scraps of paper.
That is precisely what the Moon administration is doing.
They seek to impose unjust rulings on Japan and extract enormous sums of money, while also forcing upon the majority of the South Korean people a revolution they themselves would not desire, and attempting to drag the entire country into a pro–North Korean socialist revolution led by radical forces.
The issue of the “workers from the former Korean Peninsula” must be understood within this broader context, and no compromise is necessary with the revolutionary Moon administration.
If a socialist revolution were to succeed on the Korean Peninsula, Japan’s security and diplomacy would face extraordinary difficulties, and Japan must adopt measures to strengthen its own capabilities as soon as possible.
At least 273 Japanese companies that may face lawsuits from South Korea must, at this time, deepen their basic understanding of the Moon administration and prepare for policies that it may soon pursue as revolutionary forces.
Moon’s pledge of “clearing out accumulated evils” means “the elimination of the pro-Japan mainstream,” and it should be understood that he aims to build a state centered on the ideology of Kim Il-sung.
Moon, who served as chief of staff (chief cabinet secretary) under the Roh Moo-hyun administration that followed North Korea to the letter, says that the person he respects is Shin Young-bok.
Shin was a secret member of the “Unified Revolutionary Party,” an underground revolutionary organization in South Korea created under orders from Kim Il-sung.
Even during his visit to Europe in October, Moon called for the lifting of economic sanctions on North Korea and invited the derisive reaction of French President Macron.
Even so, Moon plunges into North Korea at a pace that defies reason.
On November 1, he banned military aircraft flights in an airspace of up to 80 kilometers north and south across the 38th parallel, moving toward the disarmament of South Korea’s skies.
A large number of North Korean missiles are deployed along the 38th parallel, and Seoul can be defended only if South Korean Air Force patrol aircraft detect signs of missile launches or military activity.
Yet he stopped all patrol flights necessary for that purpose.
Because North Korea has no air defense capability, this measure only benefits North Korea.
The Moon administration is advancing a revolution of betrayal against the South Korean people, as if handing the Republic of Korea over to North Korea.
The Supreme Court’s ruling this time is also the result of a judicial revolution that the Moon administration plotted and successfully carried out.
That the four plaintiffs are not “forced laborers” was discovered from the South Korean Supreme Court’s written decision by Nishioka Tsutomu, a specialist on Korean affairs and a researcher at the think tank Japan Institute for National Fundamentals.
But the South Korean Supreme Court does not care about such matters at all.
The current Chief Justice is Kim Myeong-su, a leftist legal figure, who was handpicked by Moon last September.
Kim had served only as the presiding judge of the Chuncheon District Court, the smallest local court in South Korea.
Over the past year, he replaced one Supreme Court justice after another whose six-year terms had ended with personnel from the same leftist camp as himself (according to Nishioka).
With the highest judicial institution in South Korea taken over by revolutionary forces, the Moon administration has become, like the Chinese Communist regime, a government whose values are completely different from ours.
Therefore, as Prime Minister Abe and Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga emphasized, the first priority is to remain resolute and never yield.
The Japanese government must fully support all related Japanese companies, allow not a single yen to be paid by any company, and permit no company to break ranks.
At a time when harsh policies toward the Moon administration are necessary, what must also be pointed out is the existence of Japanese people who support such moves by South Korea.
In 2010, the 100th year since Japan’s annexation of Korea, Japanese and South Korean intellectuals announced the “Japan–Korea Intellectuals’ Joint Statement on the 100th Anniversary of the ‘Annexation of Korea’” in Tokyo and Seoul, and more than 1,000 people signed on both sides.
In addition to Professor Emeritus Haruki Wada of the University of Tokyo, many others signed, including a former deputy editorial writer of the Asahi Shimbun.
They are also people who have researched the theory that the annexation of Korea was invalid.
In May 2012, the South Korean Supreme Court ruled that “individual claims have not been extinguished,” and it is the logical framework constructed by the Japanese intellectuals mentioned above that supports the South Korean Supreme Court’s argument.
Japanese people work on the South Korean side to induce lawsuits, and in some cases even provide materials and funding to support anti-Japan movements.
The same structure seen in the comfort women issue can be seen through this case as well.
There are also cases in which large sums of support have been injected into them from the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs under the name of research funding.
A fair examination of these facts will also be necessary.
On that basis, we must address issues such as comfort women and wartime labor based on correct historical facts.
To be continued.
At this moment, among the 1,000 people mentioned above, I especially despise Kenzaburō Ōe and Haruki Murakami as profoundly as the depth of Japan’s beautiful seas and the height of its mountains.
For they are literally traitors to the nation and enemies of the state.