A chapter published on January 13, 2019, titled “The Patience of the Japanese People Is Running Out. South Korea, Stop Relying on Japan Forever,” and another chapter published on November 6, 2018, titled “Economic sanctions and entry restrictions such as restoring visa requirements should be considered,” have both ranked highly in Ameba’s official hashtag rankings.
Drawing on a Sankei Shimbun article titled “South Korea, Stop Leaning on Japan,” this piece argues that many Korean Peninsula laborers before the war came to Japan through free recruitment, that the 1965 Japan–South Korea Claims Agreement resolved the matter completely and finally, and that if South Korea seeks to overturn it, Japan should present a bill of 8 trillion yen in assets.
It also calls for realistic countermeasures, including economic sanctions and the restoration of visa requirements, while stressing that the patience of the Japanese people is nearing its limit.

2019-03-04
This figure was calculated from materials of GHQ, the former Imperial Army, and the Ministries of Finance and Foreign Affairs.
If the agreement is to be discarded, then Japan should simply present a bill for 8 trillion yen.

A chapter I published on 2019-01-13 under the title, “The patience of the Japanese people is running out. South Korea, do not go on depending on Japan forever,” has now entered Ameba’s official hashtag ranking at No. 32 for Daegu.
Another chapter I published on 2018-11-06 under the title, “Economic sanctions and entry restrictions such as restoring visa requirements should be considered,” has entered Ameba’s official hashtag ranking at No. 45 for Daegu.
What follows is from an article published on page 12 of today’s Sankei Shimbun under the title, “South Korea, do not lean on Japan.”

Three years ago, I spoke with Mr. Lee Dae-il, then aged 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 Chikuho region.
“My uncle came to Japan under the orders of the Korean village headman in his hometown of Daegu, now in South Korea.
But he used to say that there were quite a number of people from the peninsula who came of their own will in search of work.”

The Japanese government enacted the National Conscription Ordinance in July 1939.
People from the peninsula who had previously been exempted from conscription only became subject to it in September 1944, one year before the end of the war.
Until then, recruitment had been free recruitment through private brokers.
Because the work was dangerous, wages for coal mine labor were extraordinarily high.
According to Tatsuo Ueda, then aged 91, a former cultural property specialist committee member of Hojō Town, in 1920, when one bale of rice weighing 60 kilograms cost 12 yen, the average monthly wage of a coal miner was 37 yen and 77 sen.
One bale of rice was the amount an adult male consumed in one year.
In other words, they were receiving the equivalent of three years’ worth of rice in a single month.

The reason I went back over my reporting notes was that, predictable though it was, the South Korean Supreme Court 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 had come to the Japanese mainland of their own will in response to recruitment, aiming for high income.
The court wholly accepted the claims of these four men, who were demanding not unpaid wages but consolation money.
This amounted to denying the 1965 Japan–South Korea Claims Agreement, which explicitly stated that the matter had been resolved completely and finally.
It could even lead to the seizure of Japanese corporate assets.

As for Japan’s response, if all it does is file a case with the International Court of Justice, which requires the consent of the opposing party, and repeatedly say “regrettable,” that is little different from doing nothing at all.
Economic sanctions and entry restrictions such as restoring visa requirements should be considered.
Japan paid South Korea a total of 500 million dollars in grants and loans.
It also relinquished all infrastructure it had 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 amount to 8 trillion yen in present value.
This figure was calculated from materials of GHQ, the former Imperial Army, and the Ministries of Finance and Foreign Affairs.
If the agreement is to be discarded, then Japan should simply present a bill for 8 trillion yen.

The patience of the Japanese people is running out.
South Korea, do not go on depending on Japan forever.

Rui Sasaki, Deputy Editorial Board Member