Three years have passed since the South Korean Supreme Court ordered two Japanese companies to pay damages to former Korean wartime laborers drafted to work in Japanese firms, known as “choyoko.”

The ruling has sharpened the bitterness of confrontation between the Japanese and South Korean governments over history issues, adversely affecting their bilateral economic and security relations as well.

Tokyo and Seoul have been unable to make any progress toward a diplomatic solution to the sticky issue.

In September, a South Korean court ordered Mitsubishi Heavy Industries to sell assets to pay compensation to two women who claim to have been subjected to forced labor for the company during Japan’s occupation of the Korean Peninsula from 1910-1945.

The ruling means the start of the legal process of turning the company’s assets into cash to pay compensation to the plaintiffs.

If the South Korean law enforcement authorities execute the order compulsorily, the Japanese government is expected to take a retaliatory step. That would only cause additional damage to the already strained bilateral relationship.

As the time bomb continues ticking, the two governments need to pull out all stops in their diplomatic efforts to avert a full-fledged diplomatic crisis.

After the top court’s ruling, a flurry of similar lawsuits were filed in South Korea. But in many recent cases, the court rejected the plaintiffs’ claims.

This is because under South Korean law, it is assumed that victims lose their right to demand compensation when a certain period of time has elapsed after they recognized the damages they had suffered. 

Both governments have feared that the number of plaintiffs could grow indefinitely. As the possibility of a new lawsuit has declined, the two sides should inject new life into their stalled talks over the simmering row.

Some viable proposals to avert a crisis have come from the South Korean side.

In a South Korean National Assembly committee session in October, for example, a ruling party bigwig referred to payment by the South Korean government in subrogation, a legal process involving the assumption by a third party of another's legal right to collect a debt or damages.

In this approach, the South Korean government would pay compensation to former laborers on behalf of the Japanese companies that are the defendants in the suits and then claim the payment from the Japanese government.

Kang Chang-il, the South Korean ambassador to Japan, who took part in the online session, supported the proposal as “a good idea.”

This kind of subrogation plan involving payment by a third party on behalf of the defendants and collection of the money later has been considered within the South Korean government. But no formal proposal has emerged.

It should not be impossible for diplomats of the two countries to work out a compromise acceptable for both sides if they work together to consider these and other ideas through collective wisdom.

Any ingenious plan, however, would require Seoul to sell it to plaintiffs through tenacious efforts. To help such efforts in South Korea, the Japanese government needs to adopt a humble attitude to the historical fact of Japan’s colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula.

Given the political calendars in the two nations, an early diplomatic breakthrough is needed to settle the dispute.

While Prime Minister Fumio Kishida won a solid power base for his government in the Lower House election at the end of October, where the ruling Liberal Democratic Party secured an “absolute stable majority,”  it will face an Upper House poll next summer.

In South Korea, the political climate has started heating up for the presidential election in March.

Even though bilateral talks over the issue of compensation to Korean wartime laborers have so far gone nowhere, the two governments have come to understand, to a certain extent, the other side’s priorities and bottom-line demands.

If the negotiations have to start over from scratch with the new South Korean administration, a lot more time will have to be spent.

Time is running out for the current Japanese and South Korean administrations to strike a deal. It is time for Japanese and South Korean political leaders to fulfill their responsibility to push their nations toward a truly shared future without allowing the futile confrontation to drag on.

--The Asahi Shimbun, Nov. 7