By Kim Tae-gyu
Staff Reporter
The ancestors of some of Korea's top business leaders in such groups as Hyundai and Doosan have been tagged as pro-Japanese collaborators by a private research institute.
The Institute for Research in Collaborationist Activities (IRCA) recently published a directory naming 4,389 people who sympathized with Japanese authorities during Japan's brutal colonial rule over the peninsula from 1910 to 1945.
Most of the names are of politicians, soldiers and bureaucrats, but several forebears of prominent businesspeople here are also included in the three-book publication, which has caused nationwide disputes.
Doosan head Park Yong-hyun's grandfather, the founder of the group, is classified to have been in a pro-Japanese faction. Doosan is one of Korea's 10 largest family-controlled conglomerates, called chaebol.
According to the IRCA dictionary, Park's grandfather worked for several institutions that praised the rule of the colonial authorities while making big donations to the Japanese Joseon government.
Hyundai Group Chairwoman Hyun Jeong-eun's great grandfather and grandfather were listed as pro-Japanese. The IRCA said that they worked for the assembly of the Japanese authorities.
In the 1940s, Hyun's grandfather encouraged people to send their daughters to be comfort women, the group of young Korean women forced into Japanese military brothels during World War II, according to the IRCA.
Hong Ra-hee, the wife of Samsung Group owner Lee Kun-hee, also saw her father listed ― he worked as a judge in the mid-1940s for the Japanese Joseon government.
Also included are the late Kim Yeon-su, founder of Samyang Corp., and the grandfather of Grand Hilton Hotel Seoul Chairman Lee Woo-young.
``When we take the marital relations into consideration between chaebol tycoons and politicians, a number of companies are involved with pro-Japanese figures,'' IRCA research head Park Han-yong said.
``Some rightist entities have claimed that entrepreneurs should be exempted from the charges of pro-Japanese activities because they were just seeking profits. But they should be aware that some companies benefited from collaboration with Japan back then,'' he said.
When contacted, the associated companies were not happy with the IRCA publication.
``It is not fair to categorize Park's grandfather as pro-Japanese merely based on the fact that he was registered to organizations friendly with the Japanese authorities. As a merchant, he might have been forced to participate in such organizations,'' a Doosan spokesman said.
``He put forth great efforts for Korea's independence movement and contributed large amounts of money to the campaigns to reimburse the country's debt to Japan in the late 1900s in order to gain the company's independence. The IRCA did not mention these facts,'' he said.
Samsung Group, Hyundai Group, Samyang Corp., and the Grand Hilton Seoul refused to comment. Some officials cited the fact that they did not know about the private lives of those in question while others took issue with the legitimacy of the IRCA directory.