I’m sure that the comfort women have suffered immensely. I have no doubt about that. However, Park Chung Hee’s government already negotiated the monetary settlement on all of South Korean people’s behalf. The comfort women issue may still be up for debate and it wasn’t addressed specifically by the agreement. The agreement has been signed in 1965. A good summary can be found here: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/GL23Dg02.html.

Some excerpts:

“Seoul demanded US$364 million compensation for individuals who died, were injured or used as laborers during Japan’s 35-year occupation on the Korean peninsula. Instead, the South Korean government received $800 million, in a combination of grants and low-interest loans, as reparations from Japan.

South Korean dictator Park Chung-hee agreed that after this payment, South Korean citizens would give up their right to make individual claims against the Japanese government. What the declassified documents revealed was that Park only paid out about 2.56 billion won ($251 million) to families killed by the Japanese and 6.6 billion won to owners of destroyed property. None of the thousands of South Koreans conscripted into the Japanese military and labor workforce received compensation.

The remaining money was earmarked for nation-building construction projects. Park’s often-criticized vision of linking Seoul and Busan in the south by expressway became a reality. He poured money into developing infrastructure and heavy industry, especially his favored state-owned business, Pohang Iron & Steel, which later became Posco, one of the world’s top steelmakers.

The Japanese reparation money, along with American foreign aid, was the gratuitous seed money that bootstrapped the South Korean economy into the industrial nation of today.”

Another excerpt regarding the Comfort Women issue:

“Elderly women held protests every Wednesday throughout the cold winter outside the Japanese Embassy. They were the so-called “comfort women”, sex slaves forced to service Japanese troops during World War II. The declassified dossier revealed that no compensation was included for the women subjected to sexual slavery.”

Based on this passage, it looks like the situation with comfort women may still be up for debate, as far as compensation is concerned.

Well, both the South Korean and Japanese governments for starters. During negotiations, the total amount of compensation demanded was based on a dollar figures per conscripted worker. The South Korean never distributed the money in this way, but that’s what the $800 million total was based on.

“man, if i could get someone like brenden to sit with a comfort lady and have him rattle on about contracts, it be worth more than a billion fingerchops. can you imagine?”

Wouldn’t that be a lawyer’s job? Wouldn’t lawyers working on behalf of comfort women have to touch on the subject of contracts, treaties, etc? This thread concerns a lawsuit. Just because Brenden is explaining the legal angles of the case, doesn’t mean that he - or others posting here - don’t feel sympathy for comfort women. But, that’s what you are suggesting.

who? well, most of the people here on this blog. man, if i could get someone like brenden to sit with a comfort lady and have him rattle on about contracts, it be worth more than a billion fingerchops. can you imagine? i just could see him berating the little old lady:

YOUR PROBLEM IS WITH SOUTH KOREA AND NOT THE COUNTRY THAT DID THIS TO YOU. TREATIES HAVE BEEN SIGNED!

better than a million fingerchops.

The Koreans should sue Japanese companies and Japanese government should get their money back.

http://www.mg.co.za/articlePag.....onal_news/

talking about contracts when talking about comfort women is just unseemly. these women have decided japan’s paltry attempts at atoning for their actions are inadequate. that’s their right. who the hell are you to talk to them about contracts?

By the way, that settlement with Korea was not “paltry”. It was substantial: US$364 million in cash was three-and-half years’ worth of Korea’s then-prevailing US$100 per-capita GDP for each of one million victims claiming compensation. With soft loans for development reaching US$800 million, eight years’ GDP.

For a definition of “paltry” compensation, and a possible hint why these laborers are suing foreign-invested POSCO and not the Republic of Korea government, check out this one from the excellent Korea Beat blog, which has translated a Chosun Ilbo report on the descendants of a Korean War soldier killed in action defending the Republic of Korea finally receiving, 53 years later, their misplaced (i.e., the Republic of Korea failed to deliver it to them earlier) 50-won death-gratuity settlement from the government. 50 won is a little more than five US cents. A nickel!

I write about how Korea’s traffic law, and silly system of apportioning liability for accidents, keeps me off the road, because I don’t want to accept the liabilities created by the law.

I knew it was bad, but that bad..? I feel vindicated, somehow, for not even having a driving license

Another good thing about cabbing it is that you don’t have to park [of course if you have a driver, *he* has to deal with that pain]. I found the parking problem deterrent enough…

I am under the impression that where a state negotiates a peace treaty with a former belligerent, as Korea did with Japan, and claims consular protection over its nationals (as I’m sure Korea did), individuals’ claims against the former belligerent are estopped. Instead, they have to look to their state for compensation, if any.

Bingo, parchesi, etc., etc.

In the Treaty, Korea explicitly agreed that its provisions were intended to settle all Korean claims, including all claims of individual Koreans for property, tort and other criminal depredations, that Korea itself would resolve such individual claims and that the only recourse individual Koreans thereafter would have would be against the Korean state. (Japan also extinguished all individual Japanese claims, e.g., for confiscated property, etc.) I doubt that Posco, as a separately incorporated instrumentality of the State, even when it was such an entity, was subject to jurisdiction in such an action; but now that it has been privatized it clearly is not (as Brendon also explained earlier). Koreans need to stop trying to make their internal political problems everyone else’s by looking to Uncle Sucker and, in this case, private foreign investors, to pay the freight for carrying their han. Ditto the whole apology piss-up; it’s really just another aspect of the internal disgruntlement in some quarters with the deal that Korea made in the normalization treaty.

This doesn’t make me happy. And it’s not “good”. It just is. One of the things we have to get used to as lawyers is the concept that rule of law requires that sometimes the application of established rules may result in grotesque results, and deal with the outcome accordingly.

For example, today on my Korea Law Blog (here comes the shameless plug) I write about how Korea’s traffic law, and silly system of apportioning liability for accidents, keeps me off the road, because I don’t want to accept the liabilities created by the law. I don’t like the law as it stands, but my only remedy is to stay off the roads.

‘…when this whole COMFORT WOMEN issue came back up in the States, and I’m glad to see someone starting to realize that it wasn’t just the Japanese military who had been fucking the Korean people, but rather the Korean government itself which had taken its own turn at the action. But
COMFORT WOMEN (or forced laborers) suing their own government doesn’t look good in the press, nor follow the lines of ideology set down by the skewed history of modern Korea that most people learn in school, read about in popular books, and see reflected in the media again and again.’ metropolitician

‘A lot of Koreans, including COMFORT WOMEN and non-laborer war victims, and their families, have been trying to get a piece of that money ever since….’ linkd