Survivors of wartime forced labor in South Korea awarded $1.67 in compensation

GWANGJU, South Korea, Feb. 25 (UPI) -- A South Korean civic group representing forced wartime laborers said a request for retirement benefits from a Japanese pension firm has yielded a payout of 199 yen, or $1.67, for each elderly woman victim.

The women once toiled in factories owned by Mitsubishi and other corporations.

This is the second request filed by the group, Yonhap reported, for the three surviving victims in their eighties. A fourth member of the group, Oh Gil-ae, recently died.

The group's activists said in a statement Wednesday the Japanese government agency came to their decision on Feb. 4 after the four women filed a lawsuit in South Korea's Gwangju district court.

In a televised interview, one of the plaintiffs, 84-year-old Kim Jae-rim, expressed her grief at the outcome.

"It's upsetting," Kim said, trying to stifle tears. "I hope past wrongs can be made right."

The 199 yen amount, the activists said, represents 1944 currency values.

Lee Kuk-heon, the group's representative, said the payout nonetheless is a turning point because the Japanese government is beginning to acknowledge the use of forced labor in wartime.

In 2009, eight members of the group each received a retirement compensation of 99 yen.

The elderly women, the South Korean activists said, are part of a large labor force of Koreans, who both voluntarily and involuntarily joined the Japanese war effort under Japan's then National Mobilization Law.

South Korean historians estimate about 60,000 laborers died between 1930 and 1945 due to poor working conditions and exhaustion.

The civic group said teenage Korean girls and women were inducted into the labor force beginning in 1944 to work in factories owned by Japanese steel magnates, often at the behest of their schoolteachers.

Both South and North Korea were under Japanese occupation from 1910 to 1945. Each Korea will mark their 70th anniversary of independence from colonial rule in August.