One year after South Korea's Supreme Court ordered Japanese firms to compensate the victims of Japan's wartime labor,... a document produced by Japan has been released that contains detailed records of the victims.
Our Kim Jae-hee reports.
With the Seoul-Tokyo dispute still raging over the South Korean Supreme Court's compensation ruling last year on Japan's wartime labor,... the National Archives of Korea on Thursday released documents that prove Japan forcibly mobilized Korean labor during Japan's colonial rule of Korea.
The original report, titled "Report on the Survey on Labor Resources", contains the result of a study by Japan on workers that could be taken overseas.
The documents show the Japanese Government General of Korea instructed the governors of provinces to analyze available labor resources from March to September in 1940.
Accordingly, a survey was conducted on men aged between 20 to 45 and women aged between 12 to 19.
"We believe the reason why the women's ages were limited to 12 to 19 years old was to mobilize them as military comfort women."
The results of the analysis were also included in the report.
A total of 263 thousand people 242 thousand men and 20 thousand women were willing to leave their homes to work jobs other than farming.
But the Archive says the number of Koreans under Japan's plan to forcibly mobilize labor resources was actually 714 people in 1944, substantially more than the 263 people originally recorded.
"The results show that after 1942, Koreans were not voluntarily mobilized, they were forcibly taken as wartime labor."
The Archives plan to release the information on its website of 140 thousand workers listed on the employee list and health insurance book before the end of the year.
Kim Jae-hee, Arirang News.