Treaty on Basic Relations Between Japan and the Republic of Korea
The Treaty on Basic Relations Between Japan and the Republic of Korea (Japanese: 日韓基本条約 (Nikkan Kihon Jōyaku); Korean: 한일기본조약; Hanja: 韓日基本條約; RR: Hanil gibon joyak) was signed on June 22, 1965. It established basic diplomatic relations between Japan and South Korea.[1]
Background[edit]
As Korea was not a signatory state of the Treaty of San Francisco, it was not entitled to the benefits of Article 14, which stipulated the reparations by Japan. However, by the provisions of Article 21 of that treaty, Korea was entitled to be an authority applied to Article 4, which stated the arrangement of property and claims.[2]
The Treaty was the fruit of the "Korea–Japan Talks," a series of bilateral talks held between South Korea and Japan from October 1951 to June 1965 to normalize diplomatic relations. Over that period of 14 years, a total of seven talks were held.
In his 1974 Nobel Peace Prize lecture, Eisaku Satō explicitly mentioned the Treaty on Basic Relations between Japan and South Korea. He described "the guiding spirit of equality and mutual advantage and the realistic approach of seeking to establish friendship with close neighbors" as significant aspects of the extended negotiations which produced the bilateral agreement.[3]
In October 2018, the Supreme Court of Korea issued a ruling which ordered Mitsubishi Heavy to compensate the victims of forced labor. The company has not done so, with Japan arguing the matter was settled under the 1965 treaty. The Japanese Government has maintained that this ruling, along with the one made on Japan's position in relations to the Korean comfort women ('forced sexual slavery') in January 2021, is a breach of the 1965 treaty.[4]
Reparations[edit]
There has been a constant call from the South Korean public that Japan should compensate Korean individuals who suffered from Japanese colonial rule. The Japanese government has refused to do so, arguing that it settled issues on a government-to-government basis under the 1965 agreement. The South Korean government has argued that the 1965 agreement was not intended to settle individual claims against Japan for war crime or crimes against humanity as shown by documents presented during the negotiations specifically excluding claims for personal injuries incurred by Japan's violations of international laws.[10] The U.N. Commission on Human Rights has advocated the South Korean government's perspective by defining that the comfort women issue is a matter of human rights; the 1965 treaty only regulated property claims and not personal damages.[11]
In January 2005, the South Korean government disclosed 1,200 pages of diplomatic documents that recorded the proceeding of the treaty. The documents, kept secret for 40 years, recorded that the Japanese government actually proposed to the South Korean government to directly compensate individual victims but it was the South Korean government which insisted that it would handle individual compensation to its citizens and then received the whole amount of grants on behalf of the victims.[12][13][14]
South Korean government demanded a total of 364 million dollars in compensation for the 1.03 million Koreans conscripted into the workforce and the military during the colonial period,[15] at a rate of 200 dollars per survivor, 1,650 dollars per death and 2,000 dollars per injured person.[16]
South Korea agreed to demand no further compensation, either at the government or individual level, after receiving $800 million in grants and soft loans from Japan as compensation for its 1910–45 colonial rule in the treaty.[14]
Most of the funds from grants and loan were used for economic development,[17] particularly on establishing social infrastructures, founding POSCO, building Gyeongbu Expressway and the Soyang Dam with the technology transfer from Japanese companies.[18] Records also show 300,000 won per death was used to compensate victims of forced labor between 1975 and 1977.[16]