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Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has reiterated that Tokyo has no legal responsibility for the drafting of "comfort women" as sex slaves for its army in World War II and that all claims ended with the 1965 Korea-Japan Treaty. He was responding to a conclusion by the Korean government, based on examination of declassified documents related to the 1965 treaty, that the Japanese government remains liable for crimes against humanity its military committed. And indeed, the diplomatic dossier reveals that the comfort women, Korean victims of the atomic bombings of Japan and Korean forced labor on Sakhalin Island were not discussed at the time of the treaty. Under international law, moreover, no statute of limitations applies to crimes against humanity, so Tokyo¡¯s claim that the 1965 treaty absolves it of all responsibility ill becomes a nation that seeks a leading role in international politics. Korea says it will address the issue by diplomatic means.
The declassified papers also present fertile material for historical evaluation. One professor who reviewed the documents in advance said he, like many others, had thought Korea was a pushover in the negotiations. ¡°But reviewing the documents, I came to believe that the government did its best to act in the national interest." If those in the government who have slammed the diplomacy leading up to the 1965 treaty as submissive could go back 40 years and take charge of the negotiations, there is no guarantee that they would have got a better result. Some say they would have produced no deal at all, or even if they had, they would have found it impossible to use the money that flowed into Korea as a result any more effectively for national development.
Of the five nations that got money from Japan after World War II, in the name of restitution or funds to ¡°congratulate them on national independence,¡± only Korea made priority use of the funds for economic development by effectively investing it in basic facilities like the construction of Pohang Iron and Steel (now POSCO) and the Seoul-Busan Highway. In the Philippines, which got even more money, the landed elites spent it any way they liked. In the early 1960s, the Philippines' per capita income was six times ours; now it is not even a tenth.
In March, President Roh Moo-hyun said he was ready to fight a ¡°diplomatic war¡± with Japan, adding, "We, too, now have the capability to withstand considerable difficulty." Yet if the government at the time had not secured foreign investment through its agreement on claims with Japan and sending troops to Vietnam and effectively used those funds for economic development, all the while taking criticism for its "submissive diplomacy" on the chin, the Korean government of 2005 would have no such means to boast about, and would be in no position to fight a diplomatic war.
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