A/HRC/25/CRP.1
Pyongyang. These non-violent demonstrations spread over the ensuing days to numerous
cities and towns. Japanese authorities arrested thousands of Koreans, many of whom died
as a result of torture and inhumane conditions of detention.19
93.
Japan instigated major industrialization on the Korean peninsula as part of its
massive war effort. Steel mills, factories and hydroelectric plants were built, mainly in the
North. Much of the Korean population was uprooted from its agrarian base. Koreans,
including women and children, were sent to labour in factories in the northern part of the
peninsula and in Manchuria and to mines and other enterprises in Japan. Many of the
labourers worked under terrible conditions, and a large number of men and women were
conscripted as forced labour.20 By 1945, it is estimated that Koreans made up a large
percentage of the entire labour force in Japan.21
94.
It is estimated that by 1945, 20 per cent of all Koreans had been displaced from their
places of origin, with 11 per cent displaced outside Korea.22 At the end of World War II,
there were approximately 2.4 million Koreans in Japan, 2 million in China and about
200,000 in the Soviet Union.23 After Japan’s defeat in World War II, the colonial
administration collapsed. Millions of displaced Koreans sought to return home while others
stayed behind in Japan, China and the Soviet Union. The legacy of this forced displacement
includes substantial minority populations of Koreans, particularly in Japan and northern
China.24
C.
Division of the peninsula, the Korean War and its legacy
95.
As the end of World War II approached, the matter of the disposition of colonies
around the world became subject to negotiation by the soon-to-be victorious powers. The
United States of America suggested a multi-lateral trusteeship for Korea in its general
19
20
21
22
23
24
See the Encyclopaedia Britannica, available from
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/364173/March-First-Movement; Global Nonviolent
Action Database, available from http://nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu/content/koreans-protest-japanesecontrol-march-1st-movement-1919; and Nishi Masayuki, “March 1 and May 4, 1919 in Korea, China
and Japan: Toward an International History of East Asian Independence Movements,” Asia-Pacific
Journal: Japan Focus, October 31, 2007, available from http://japanfocus.org/-nishimasayuki/2560#sthash.F2t9tgKt.dpuf.
In May 2012, the Republic of Korea’s Supreme Court in a decision that reversed previous lower court
decisions and ruled that the right of former forced workers and their families to seek withheld wages
and compensation was not invalidated by the 1965 treaty that normalized bi-lateral ties. In July 2013,
the Seoul High Court ruled in favour of four Korean men who were taken into forced labour, ordering
Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal to pay them a total of 400 million won. The Busan High Court, on
30 July 2013, ordered Mitsubishi Heavy Industries to pay the same amount in compensation to five
Koreans. In October 2013, the Gwangju District Court ordered Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. to
pay four Korean women, who were forcibly conscripted as labourers, 150 million won (about
US$141,510) each in compensation. Japan maintains that all individual compensation claims were
settled with the 1965 treaty. “South Korean court orders MHI to pay Korean women for forced
labour”, Kyodo News, 1 November 2013. Appeals against these judgements were pending when this
report was finalized.
According to Bruce Cummings, 32 per cent of the entire labour force of Japan was Koreans. Bruce
Cummings, The Origins of the Korean War: Liberation and the Emergence of Separate Regimes,
1945-1947 (Princeton University Press, 1981), p. 28.
Bruce Cummings, The Origins of the Korean War, p. 25.
Charles Armstrong, The Koreas (New York, Routledge, 2007), pp. 95-101.
After the war, half of the Koreans in China chose to stay, and about 600,000 Koreans remained in
Japan. Charles Armstrong, The Koreas, pp. 108-111.
21