S. Korean, Japanese lawyers demand Tokyo release documents on 1965 treaty

Lawyers from South Korea and Japan pressed Tokyo to disclose all documents regarding a 1965 treaty that the Japanese government insists closed all compensation matters for victims of colonial rule, blaming its refusal to do so for the persisting distrust between the neighboring countries, Yonhap News Agency reported Sunday in a dispatch from Tokyo.

In a joint statement adopted Saturday after a forum, members of the two countries' bar associations said inconsistent and different interpretations of the treaty by Seoul and Tokyo have interfered in victims' efforts to claim their rights, letting questions and distrust to grow.

In a pact that normalized relations between South Korea and Japan, Tokyo provided soft loans and grants worth close to $8 million. Japan says the treaty effectively settled all compensatory issues, barring governments from seeking reparations for its 1910-45 colonial rule over the Korean Peninsula.

South Korea in August 2005 disclosed its side of the documents related to the negotiations and signing of the agreement, but Japan has yet to make public its records. Seoul says the pact does not cover compensation for some of the victims, including sexually enslaved women, people mobilized for forced labor and later abandoned in Sakhlin, and those injured by atomic bombing.

"Japan should make a full disclosure of its documents so that (the two countries) can share a consensus on the process leading up to the agreement," the joint statement said.

The lawyers proposed that the Japanese government and corporations that had mobilized Korean workers form a joint fund to compensate the forced laborers.

They also said they will form a committee to push for the return of Korean cultural artifacts taken by Japan during the colonial years.