By Kim Jong-chan
Deputy Managing Editor
A century ago on Aug. 22, the Korea-Japan annexation treaty was signed between Prime Minister Lee Wan-yong, a pro-Japanese collaborator, and Japan's Governor General of Korea Terauchi Masatake. The treaty said that King Sunjong will make a complete and permanent cession to Japan over Korea.
But there are procedural flaws which support that the pact was invalid under international law.
The original copy of Japan's proclamation of the treaty was stamped with the country's state seal, accompanied by Emperor Meiji's signature.
The Korean edict of the pact, on the other hand, had neither the nation's state seal nor the king's signature, a requirement for the accord to take effect under international law. What was contained in the Korean version is the king's privy seal which, historians say, was used solely for administrative approval.
Photos of the edicts are among artifacts on display at an exhibition on the modern history of Korea-Japan relations at the National Assembly Library in Seoul. The exhibit will continue until Monday.
Japan has asserted that under King Sunjong's endorsement, the annexation treaty took effect legally 100 years ago on Aug. 29, which is called in Korea ``gukchi-il" or ``the day of national humiliation."
King Sunjong, historians say, signed the treaty with the accompaniment of the state seal after hours of silent protest under the situation that thousands of armed Japanese troops sealed the royal palace.
The last monarch of Korea's Joseon Kingdom (1392-1910), refused to sign the edict to proclaim the treaty, apparently saying ``no" to the annexation.
For the past decades, Japan has never admitted the forced annexation was illegal.
Offering what is considered Tokyo's clearest-yet apology for the colonial rule of Korea (1910-45) early this month, Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan said that the annexation was against the will of the Korean people. But his statement fell short of mentioning its illegality.
President Lee Myung-bak, an advocate of the establishment of future-oriented relations between the two countries, responded positively to Prime Minister Kan's statement.
In his speech to celebrate the 65th anniversary of Liberation Day on Aug. 15, Lee said Japan made a step forward with Prime Minister Kan's ``heartfelt" apology for the annexation. However, he said, there still remain issues that should be resolved.
Last month, hundreds of intellectuals from the two countries, including lawyers and scholars, presented the results of their study dismissing the annexation treaty as invalid for procedural problems.
North Korea, meanwhile, issued a strongly worded statement labeling the annexation as state-engineered terrorism against a sovereign state by use of military forces. It accused Japan of fabricating invalid ``treaties," including the 1905 Ulsa Protection Treaty, to usurp the national sovereignty of Korea.
In addition, the communist state renewed its demand that Japan apologize and compensate for all victims of the colonial rule, apparently criticizing Kan's statement in which Japan again avoided talking about compensation for the forced laborers and ``comfort women," sexual slaves for Japanese soldiers.
Imagine that during World War II (1939-45), more than one million Koreans were killed and at least 8.4 million others were mobilized for forced labor. In addition, an estimated 200,000 young Korean women were forcibly taken to military-run brothels to provide sex to Japanese soldiers.
Japan remains unchanged in its position that the 1965 Treaty of Basic Relations, under which South Korea and Japan normalized relations, already addressed individual compensation.
There has been no such pact between North Korea and Japan since Korea's liberation from Japanese colonial rule following the end of World War II in 1945.
Under the 1965 accord, South Korea received $800 million in grants and soft loans. But critics have demanded that Japan do more such as compensating individual victims.
North Korea has yet to say how much Japan should pay as individual compensation for the victims of the colonial rule. The Rodong Sinmun newspaper, published by North Korea's ruling Workers' Party, once recalled that in 2008, Italy apologized for the atrocities it committed during its colonial rule of Libya from 1911 to 1943, and agreed to pay the North African country $5 billion.
For the past decades, Germany has repented the Holocaust (1933-45) that massacred six million Jews ― the systematic, bureaucratic and state-sponsored atrocities committed by Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime and its collaborators. The German move is being touted as a model case in the world.
Unless Japan repents its past wrongdoings in a sincere manner, Koreans will not stop sticking to an emotional way of thinking over the past, thus making it difficult for the two countries to open future-oriented ties in this 21st century.