TOKYO, March 6 (Xinhua) — Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida stated on Monday that his authorities will uphold a key postwar apology, beforehand issued by Japan following South Korea offered an answer to a protracted wartime labor row.
Kishida stated Japan will stand by an apology that was issued by then Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama in an announcement in 1995, on the fiftieth anniversary of Japan’s give up in World War II.
The assertion has been talked about by successive Japanese cupboards as the federal government’s primary stance, though the terminology, significantly just about the phrase “remorse”, has not all the time remained the identical, which has drawn the ire of Japan’s neighbors who had been victims of its wartime aggression.
“We have taken over the position articulated by the previous cabinets on the view of history and will continue to do so,” Kishida stated at a parliamentary session, the identical day the South Korean facet offered an answer to resolve a longstanding wartime labor difficulty that had adversely affected bilateral ties.
Local media reported that Seoul’s plan revolves across the formation of a government-backed South Korean basis that might be chargeable for compensating Korean plaintiffs, reasonably than the 2 Japanese companies that had been ordered by rulings by South Korean courts to pay damages.
According to Japan’s public broadcaster NHK, some plaintiffs affected by the wartime labor pressured upon them by their Japanese aggressors stated they might refuse to just accept the compensation from the South Korean fund.
They stated they consider an apology from Japan and damages paid by the Japanese companies concerned are the one method to settle the matter.