Monday, June 02, 2003
KOREA HERALD ON JAPAN-ROK RELATIONS: HISTORY REARS ITS UGLY HEAD (AGAIN)
Japan has persistently refused to compensate its Asian victims for its crimes before and during World War II. The question of its extremely slow moral atonement aside, Tokyo has cited the San Francisco Peace Treaty of 1951 and the 1965 agreement with Seoul for normalization of relations, as well as domestic statutes, as the legal bases for its position. Both international accords are clearly flawed, however, because they failed to reflect the voices of the victims of imperial Japan's brutal aggression and exploitation of its neighbors.
Last Friday, the Osaka High Court passed down a ruling that again reaffirmed Japan's lamentable insensitivity to the unhealed wounds from its militarism. It overturned a district court decision that ordered the Japanese government to pay 45 million yen to 15 South Koreans, either relatives of those who were killed in or survivors of the tragic explosion of a Japanese naval vessel on Aug. 24, 1945, nine days after Korea's liberation from Japanese rule.
