Park Ji-won is a writer for The Korea Times who has been covering a wide range of topics from Korea’s culture to its politics. An avid journalism enthusiast to the core, Ji-won brings a thoughtful and unique perspective to every topic she covers. On weekends, you'll often find her contemplating life’s purpose on a yoga mat — with a cup of quality tea in hand. A native Korean speaker by birth and fluent in English through her work, she went to college in Japan and is learning Chinese and French — hoping to add Polish, Russian and Thai to the mix.
Award-winning Japanese lawyer urges Tokyo to admit wrongdoings
Shuichi Adachi
By Park Ji-won
By Park Ji-won
A series of historic rulings ordering Japanese firms to compensate Korean forced laborers during Japanese colonial rule have been made from the end of last year. Shuichi Adachi, a 60-year-old Japanese human rights lawyer and head of the group of Korean and Japanese lawyers who worked together to represent the victims since 1994, contributed to winning those cases.
Honoring the dedication of Adachi and his colleagues, a South Korean reporters' club in the law field gave the Korea-Japan lawyer alliance this year's prize for best people in law in January. The club thought highly of the defense counsel's years of contributions to human rights issues such as wartime sex slavery, forced laborers, victims of the 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and ethnic Koreans' education subsidies in Japan.
Adachi remained humble about his achievements but strongly urged Japanese society to admit the illegality of its colonial rule of Korea to overcome conflicts between Korea and Japan.
“The lawyer alliance between Japan and Korea was able to be formed. And it took 19 years to win the case of the forced labor issue in Korea. I am extremely happy about it, and winning the prize. But Japanese society continues to criticize and bash the situation, with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe as their leader,” Adachi told The Korea Times in an email interview conducted after the award.
“This is based on the problem with the vague description of Japan's illegal colonization of Korea in the 1965 treaty. Unless Japanese society recognizes the illegality of the occupation, I think the gap between the two countries will not be narrowed.”
Takagi Kenichi, Adachi's longtime colleague who has worked since 1973 for victims of the 1910-45 colonial rule such as Koreans in Sakhalin, gave an acceptance speech in Seoul. Kenichi echoed Adachi's view. He criticized the Japanese leader and foreign minister for criticizing the South Korean court ruling on the forced labor issue, saying individuals outside of Japan should also have the right to claim compensation, which the Japanese government admitted to earlier, as there is no law preventing them from making claims from other countries.
To win the suit in Seoul took 13 years. His team partially won the case in the appellate court in 2005 and the Supreme Court in 2007 in Japan for 40 South Korean forced laborers who returned to Korea after liberation who had been victims of the Hiroshima atomic bombing while working for Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. The Japanese government didn't admit the forced laborers' rights as victims of the bombing as they now live outside of Japan. They won compensation by the Japanese government for those victims even though the case didn't admit the responsibility of the company. The case played a big role to win compensation for other similar victims living outside Japan.
Maybe he didn't know he would work for so many South Korean victims for this long. But it was simple in the beginning. Adachi took over his first Korea-related case after one of his friends asked him to do so in 1994. Those cases are not profitable in a monetary sense and are also against the government stance, which makes them challenging for lawyers.
Surprisingly, he hasn't faced any threats from far-right activists because of what he is doing for victims. Presumably, he would have had a hard time persuading victims to take legal action, gathering evidence and strategizing in court. However he simply said, “Difficult experiences are left in the past when we achieve a good result.”
However, it appears he has been discriminated against by the government to some extent. He said an online comment he made on Foreign Minister Taro Kono's post about the South Korean court's rulings on Nippon Steel in favor of the victims, was erased without notice.
The fact that Japanese society was not able to pay back the “debt” from its colonization and the unjustifiable suffering of the victims are his two driving forces.
He suggested it would be helpful to set up a two-plus-two foundation between the two countries, which would be participated in by firms and governments from both countries.
“If you think about the case of the Memory, Responsibility and Future Foundation in Germany, compensation was paid to individuals first and then it led to building the foundation. But considering the fact that there are not many remaining survivors here, meaning there is not enough time for them, we should seriously discuss making a compromise for them.”
Even though diplomatic relations between South Korea and Japan are getting worse as their leaders are exchanging barbs against each other over the ruling and other disputes such as sex slavery, he expressed hope that the disputes will be settled as long as there are exchanges between peoples of the two countries.
“It appears the relations between Japan and South Korea are getting worse,” he said. “I think it will be resolved as long as there is a people-to-people exchange between the two countries. I don't think the Abe administration will last forever. I want to learn from Korean people who were able to change their country.”