PICTURED: SOUTH KOREAN FOREIGN MINISTER PARK JIN ANNOUNCING THE COMPENSATION PLAN.
South Korean companies would be required to compensate people who were forced to work during the 1910-1945 Japanese occupation of South Korea.
The proposal was praised in Japan but sparked a backlash from South Korea's main opposition party on the grounds that it is a capitulation to Japanese demands.
The plan seeks to compensate the families of people forced into labor via an existing public foundation that receives funding from South Korean corporations.
- Japanese firms would not be required to contribute to the fund, but they can do so.
- The South Korean Democratic Party, the country's main opposition party, condemned the proposal as "submissive diplomacy" for failing to hold Japanese companies accountable for abuses perpetrated during Japan's colonial occupation of South Korea.
- U.S. President Joe Biden said the plan will usher in a "groundbreaking new chapter of cooperation and partnership between two of the United States’ closest allies."
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- In 2018, the South Korean Supreme Court ordered Japanese firms to pay reparations to South Korean forced laborers.
- The matter has contributed to strained relations between the two countries for decades.
- According to media estimates, are fewer than 1,300 living victims of forced labor in South Korea.
