신일본제철은 이에 불복해 상고장을 제출했으며 미쓰비시 역시 상고할 것으로 예상된다.
지금껏 일본 정부건 민간이건 한국 피해자들의 피해보상 요구에 대해 침묵을 지켜온 이들은 1965년 한일청구권협정으로 개인 청구권이 소멸되었다고 주장해왔다.
당시 협정으로 인해 양국 정부는 강제 징용 노동자 및 위안부 등의 피해보상 청구권을 인정하지 않는 태도를 보여왔으며, 이를 바탕으로 일본 정부는 한국인 피해자들의 피해보상 요구를 묵살해왔다.
그러나 한국의 인권운동가, 변호사와 심지어 일본 측의 일부 전문가들까지도 역시 당시 한국 정부가 개인을 대신하여 협상할 권리가 없다며, 개인청구권이 소멸되지 않았다고 주장한 바 있다.
김영원 외교통상부 한일청구권협정 대책 자문위원은 “개인청구권이 존재한다고 봐야 한다”면서 과거에는 한일 양국 모두 청구권이 없다고 했다가, 양측이 있다고 인정을 했는데, 일본이 이제 와서 다시 없다고 하는 상황이라고 설명했다.
또한 그는 한국 정부가 2011년 위안부 피해자에 대한 헌법재판소의 판결 이후 일본과 위안부 문제를 논하려고 했으나 별 소득이 없었다고 말했다. 당시 헌법재판소는 정부가 일본군 위안부 피해자의 배상청구권을 놓고 한일 양국 간 분쟁이 있는데도 정부가 이를 해결하기 위해 구체적인 노력을 다하지 않은 것은 피해자의 기본권을 침해한 것으로 헌법에 위배된다고 판단한 바 있다.
김위원은 또한 최근 징용 피해자에 대한 판결에 대해 일본 측에서 한국이 ‘협정을 무효화하려고 한다’고 주장할 수 있다고 경고했다.
정부는 2005년 8월 한일 협정 관련 문서를 공개하면서 총리실 주관 민관공동위원회를 구성해 위안부, 원폭 피해자, 사할린 동포 등 3가지를 제외한 경우는 청구권 협정을 통해 배상이 일단락됐다고 발표한 바 있다.
하지만, 일본이 꾸준히 현재의 입장을 고집해온 건 아니다. 최근 공개된 문서를 보면, 일본 정부는 과거 강제 노역에 동원된 이들에게 개별적 보상과 더불어 한국 정부와는 별개로 그들의 개인 청구권을 검토했었다.
지난 4월, 일본 정부를 상대로 소송을 이끌고 있는 변호사 최봉태씨가 공개한 문서의 일부를 보면, 한일 양국간 협상이 진행되던 1961년 당시 이케다 하야토 일본 총리가 박정희 전 대통령에게 이와 같은 제안을 했었다는 내용이 있다.
협상은 1952년부터 1965년 까지 총 13년 동안 진행 됐으며, 이케다 총리는 한국인 피해자에 대해서도 일본인과 똑같이 배상하려 했던 것으로 드러났다.
하지만, 제시된 모든 사안들이 1965년 최종 협상에서는 제외됐다. 대신해, 한국은 5억 달러를 받았으며, 그 중 3억 달러는 일본 정부의 무상증자 형태로, 나머지 2억 달러는 민간 부문에서 융자형태로 지급 받았다.
최씨는 “한국 정부가 국민을 팔았다. 2005년 공개된 문서를 보면, 정부가 생존자에게 각각 200달러씩을 요구했으며, 사망자에게는 1,650 달러 그리고 부상자에게는 2,000달러를 요구했다”라고 말했다.
하지만, 최씨는 일본이 공개를 거부한 전체 문서는 또 다른 이야기가 있을 거라고 생각한다며, “일본은 한국 정부의 대답이 담겨 있는 부분을 공개 하지 않을 것이다. 만약 이 부분이 공개될 경우, 일본 측에서 1965년 돈을 준 사실이 징병 피해자들을 위한 게 아니었다는 사실이 분명해 지기 때문이다”라고 설명했다.
이어 “오히려, 문서가 공개된다면, 일본 정부측에서 한국 정부에게 그 돈을 피해자들에게 주지 말라는 내용이 있을 것이며, 또한 외교문서는 일반적으로 30년이 지나면 공개 되는데, 협상이 있은 지 50년이 지난 오늘날에도 공개하기를 거부하는 이유는 일본도 자신들이 얼마나 잘못된 행동을 했는지를 알고 있기 때문이다”라고 덧붙였다.
일본이 문서의 일부를 공개하지 않는 이유에 대해서 피해자들에게 제대로 보상되지 않음이 드러나, 더 큰 비용을 지불해야 할 수 도 있음을 알기 때문이라고 설명했다.
한국 정부는 1966년 피해자, 가족 보상을 위한 법적 근거를 마련하기 시작했지만 1975년 까지 보상이 이뤄지지 않았다.
보상금 또한, 한국 정부가 일본 정부에 요구한 금액 보다 훨씬 적은 액수가 그것도 피해자 일부에게만 돌아갔다.
1975년과 1977년 사이 강제 노역에 시달리며 해외에서 죽음을 맞이한 8,552명의 피해자 가족들은 각각 300,000원의 보상금을 지급받았다.
이를 당시의 원-달러 환율로 환산해보면, 보상금 300,000원은 622달러 이며 이는 일본으로부터 한국인 피해 사망자 1인당 보상금으로 받은 1,650 달러의 3분의 1 수준이다.
강제 노역에서 살아 남은 생존자들은 물론 사망한 피해자들의 가족까지도 정부의 이러한 행동에 대해 50여 년 동안 분노하고 있다.
피해자 가족 집단 대표 이주선씨는 “우리는 끝까지 갈 겁니다. 저 뿐만 아니라 다른 분들도 한국 정부를 상대로 소송을 준비 중입니다” 라고 말했다.
이씨의 아버지는 일본군에 강제 징집 당하고, 전쟁에서 숨졌다. 이씨는 아버지가 생전에 “형언할 수 없는 부당함”을 느꼈다고 이야기 했다.
이어 “박정희 정부는 일본에 보상을 받고 우리는 십원 한 장도 받지 못했다. 어떻게 이럴 수가 있나?”라고 울분을 토했다. (영문 기사: 코리아헤럴드 최희석 기자, 한글: 코리아헤럴드 윤민식 기자, 최인정 인턴기자)
<관련 영문 기사>
Victims of Japan’s colonial labor conscription unappeased after 70 years
By Choi He-suk
Nearly seven decades after the Korean Peninsula was liberated from Japan’s colonial rule, the matter of Tokyo‘s compensation for Koreans conscripted into forced labor and military service remains unresolved.
After annexing Korea in 1910, Japan used the peninsula as a pantry full of resources, for labor and as a forward base for its military ambitions.
Japan’s exploitation of Korean labor took off in earnest in 1939 when the National Service Draft Ordinance was added to the National Mobilization Law that allowed the drafting of civilians into the war industries.
At first, the ordinance was applied only to Koreans with skills applicable to specific industries such as steel making and airplane production. However, as labor shortages rose to unmanageable levels at the height of the Pacific War in 1944, Japan’s Cabinet approved bringing unskilled laborers from the Korean Peninsula on Aug. 8 of that year.
From then on, massive numbers of Koreans were conscripted as laborers and shipped to Japan and to other occupied territories including China and Southeast Asia.
“Some academics estimate that as many as 2 million Koreans were conscripted as soldiers and support staff for the Japanese military and as laborers,” Park In-hwan, chief of the Commission on Verification and Support for the Victims of Forced Mobilization under Japanese Colonialism of Korea, said. In comparison, the Korean population of the peninsula stood at about 23.5 million in 1940.
Of the estimated 2 million, about 1.3 million were shipped abroad and the remainder were sent to build military facilities in various locations on the Korean peninsula including Jeju Island and the south coast.
Many never returned home, having been killed during service or died years later in foreign lands.
“There are remains in Japan, Polynesia, Papua New Guinea, Sakhalin, Saipan. In Sakhalin alone, there are tens of thousands of remains (of conscripted Korean laborers),” Park said.
Koreans who were conscripted as laborers for Japanese companies and worked abroad under grueling conditions have only now started to gain legal recognition of their rights to compensation.
On July 10, the Seoul High Court ruled in favor of four Korean victims of forced labor and ordered Nippon Steel and Sumitomo Metal Corp. to pay 100 million won ($88,000) to each plaintiff.
Three weeks later, the Busan High Court made a similar ruling against Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, ordering the Japanese company to pay 80 million won to each of the five forced laborers.
However, Nippon Steel and Sumitomo Metal have already appealed, and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries is expected to follow suit.
One agreement, different views
Japanese entities –- public and private -– have ignored Korean victims’ claims, arguing that the 1965 Korea-Japan Claims Settlement Agreement covers all related issues including conscripted laborers and comfort women. Comfort women are women of various nationalities, mainly Korean, who were forced to serve as sex slaves for Japanese soldiers in the first half of the 20th century. Despite evidence to the contrary, Japan has maintained for decades that the comfort women were never forced by the state into sexual slavery.
Japanese courts have thrown out numerous suits filed by Koreans seeking compensation on the grounds that Japan’s responsibilities were fulfilled by the agreement.
However, Korean activists, lawyers and even some Japanese legal professionals have argued that the individuals’ rights to claim remain intact, saying that the Korean government was not authorized to be their proxy in conducting the negotiations.
Although the Korean authorities had held the view that the 1965 agreement nullified the individuals’ rights to claims, that opinion has shifted in recent years.
“Individual’s rights to claim should be considered to exist. In the past, both Korea and Japan said that the rights didn’t exist, then both agreed that the rights did exist but Japan has gone back to denying it,” Kim Young-won, the Ministry of Foreign Affair’s special ambassador for issues concerning the Korea-Japan Claims Settlement Agreement, said.
He added that after a Constitutional Court’s ruling regarding comfort women, the Korean government had attempted to engage Japan to discuss related issues, but to no avail.
In 2011, the Constitutional Court ruled that the Korean government had failed to make all diplomatic efforts to obtain compensation for the comfort women, and that the government violated their basic rights through its lack of action.
Kim also warned of repercussions related to recent rulings from Seoul and Busan courts.
“Japan could argue that we are defaulting on a treaty as the interpretation (of the situation) has changed since 2005,” Kim said.
In 2005, a study conducted under the Prime Minister’s Office concluded that the 1965 agreement covered victims of Japan’s colonial rule with the exception of those sent to Sakhalin, comfort women and those who were affected by the nuclear bombing of Japan.
Jumble of records buried in time
However, Japan has not always held its current position.
Recently revealed records have shown that the Japanese government had the intention to compensate those forced into labor individually and to treat their right to claim separately from that of Korea.
In April, Choi Bong-tae, a lawyer who is leading the suit against the Japanese government, revealed a partial record of the Korea-Japan negotiations in 1961 that showed that Hayato Ikeda, the Japanese prime minister at the time, suggested such measures to former President Park Chung-hee.
The negotiations as a whole lasted 13 years from 1952 to 1965.
In the document, Ikeda is quoted as saying that his government was willing to apply the same standards it was using to compensate Japanese nationals to Korean victims.
Ikeda is also on record as saying that his government would consider providing pension and consolation payments to those who had returned to Korea.
However, all such measures were excluded from the final agreement reached in 1965. Instead, Korea received $500 million –- $300 million of which was a free grant -- from the Japanese government and $200 million in loans from Japan’s private sector.
“Our government sold the people out. In 2005, documents were disclosed in Korea and it showed that the government requested $200 for every survivor, $1,650 for each person who died and $2,000 for everyone who was injured,” Choi said.
However, Choi believes that full records, which Japan has refused to disclose, will tell a different story.
“Japan will not disclose the parts (that contain the Korean government’s response). If those parts are disclosed, the fact that the money they provided in 1965 was not for conscription victims will be made clear,” Choi said.
“I suspect that if those parts are revealed, it will show that Japan told (the Korean government) not to give that money to the victims.”
“Diplomatic records are usually made public after 30 years. It has been 50 years (since the negotiations), and the fact that they (Japanese government) are unwilling to open the records even today proves that they know just how much wrong they did,” Choi said. He added that the reason Japan was keeping the remainder of the documents secret was that the records would prove that the victims had not been compensated, which would in turn lead to huge costs.
“Revealing documents doesn’t require money. What is needed now is the courage to look at the truth not money.”
Lasting anguish
Although the Korean government began laying the legal basis for compensating the victims and their families in 1966, the first payment was not made until 1975.
Even when the payments were made, only a fraction of the victims were able to receive amounts far smaller than what the Korean government demanded from Japan.
Between 1975 and 1977, families of 8,552 Koreans who died abroad under forced labor each received 300,000 won.
By the won-dollar exchange rate of the time, 300,000 won was worth about $622, only about a third of the $1,650 the government received from Japan for each Korean who died in its service.
The actions taken by the Korean government at the time continue to anger those who survived forced labor and the families of the deceased victims nearly 50 years on.
“We will take it to the end. Myself and a few others are also preparing suits against the Korean government,” Lee Ju-seon, the head of an association of victims’ families, said.
Lee, whose father died in the south Pacific after he was conscripted into the Japanese navy, says that he feels “indescribable injustice.”
“The Park Chung-hee government received compensation (from Japan) but we have not seen a penny of it. How can this be?”
(
cheesuk@heraldcorp.com)
