This essay examines the South Korean Supreme Court ruling that effectively denied the 1965 Japan-Korea Claims Agreement, reviews the realities of prewar Korean labor migration, and argues that if Seoul repudiates the treaty, Japan should respond by demanding compensation for the vast infrastructure assets it left behind on the Korean Peninsula, estimated at 8 trillion yen in present value.

2019-04-11
If South Korea tears up the agreement, Japan should present it with a bill for 8 trillion yen.
The patience of the Japanese people is wearing thin.
South Korea must stop depending on Japan forever.

This is a chapter I published on 2018-11-06 under the title: There Is an Estimate That the Total Assets Amounted to About 17 Trillion Yen, of Which the South Korean Portion Would Equal 8 Trillion Yen in Present Value.
The following is from an article published on page 12 of today’s Sankei Shimbun under the title “South Korea, Stop Acting Spoiled.”
Three years ago, I interviewed Mr. Lee Dae-il, then 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 Chikuhō region.
“My uncle came to Japan under the orders of the head of the Korean village in his hometown of Daegu, now in South Korea.
But he said that quite a large number of people from the peninsula also came seeking work of their own free will.”
The Japanese government enacted the National Conscription Ordinance in July 1939.
It was not until September 1944, one year before the end of the war, that peninsular Koreans who had previously been exempt became subject to conscription.
Before that, recruitment was freely conducted through private brokers.
Because the work was dangerous, wages for coal miners were extraordinarily high.
According to Mr. Tatsuo Ueda, then 91, a former cultural properties specialist in Hojō Town, in 1920, when one bale of rice, 60 kilograms, cost 12 yen, the average monthly wage of a coal miner was 37 yen and 77 sen.
One bale of rice is the amount an adult man consumes in one year.
That means they were earning the equivalent of three years’ worth of rice in a single month.
I revisited my reporting notes because, predictable though it was, the South Korean Supreme Court had committed an act of folly.
It was the lawsuit filed 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, seeking high income.
Yet the court wholly accepted the claims of these four men, who were not demanding unpaid wages but so-called consolation payments.
This amounted to denying the 1965 Japan-Korea Claims Agreement, which explicitly stated that the matter had been settled completely and finally.
It could even lead to the seizure of assets belonging to Japanese companies.
As for Japan’s response, merely filing a case with the International Court of Justice, which requires the consent of the opposing state, or repeatedly expressing “regret,” would be little different from doing nothing at all.
Japan should consider economic sanctions and entry restrictions such as restoring visa requirements.
Japan paid South Korea a total of 500 million dollars in grants and loans.
It also relinquished all infrastructure 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 equal 8 trillion yen in present value.
This figure was calculated from materials from GHQ, the former Imperial Japanese Army, and the Finance and Foreign Ministries.
If South Korea tears up the agreement, Japan should present it with a bill for 8 trillion yen.
The patience of the Japanese people is wearing thin.
South Korea must stop depending on Japan forever.
Rui Sasaki, Deputy Editorial Writer.