Photo : YONHAP News
Anchor: The government will launch an investigation to track down the ill-gotten gains left behind by Koreans who collaborated with Japan during the Japanese occupation of Korea in the early part of the 20th century. Speaking during a Memorial Day ceremony, President Lee Jae Myung pledged the initiative to find and seize those wrongfully accumulated assets as he commemorated Koreans who sacrificed everything for their country, including those who fought for independence from Japan.
Kim Bum-soo has more.
Report:
[Sound bite: 71st Memorial Day ceremony (Seoul National Cemetery)]
President Lee Jae Myung says the government will confiscate the wealth that pro-Japanese collaborators accumulated during the 35 years Korea was under Japanese occupation.
In his speech at Seoul National Cemetery on Saturday to mark the 71st Memorial Day, Lee revealed his plans to track down those he called disloyal to the Korean community.
[Sound bite: President Lee Jae Myung (Korean-English)]
“Through the Act on the Confiscation of Pro-Japanese Property, promulgated June 2, we will investigate and recover assets unjustly accumulated by pro-Japanese, anti-Korean collaborators to hold them accountable, and set an example to prevent any recurrence.”
Last month the ruling Democratic Party passed the legislation in the absence of most lawmakers from the main opposition People Power Party, abolishing a similar law introduced two decades ago that was never strictly enforced.
The new law enables the confiscation of assets from pro-Japanese collaborators as well as the gains their descendants made by liquidating those assets.
[Sound bite: President Lee Jae Myung (Korean-English)]
“As we honor those who defended our community, it is also a crucial duty entrusted to us to punish those who betrayed the community to serve their own interests. Only when dedication is exalted and betrayal is condemned can a national community achieve social justice and unity for its continued existence and development.”
The special act will revive the Investigative Commission on Pro-Japanese Collaborators’ Property, which was disbanded in 2010, and give it a new five-year mandate.
The investigators will then have the daunting task of determining which assets should be seized, eight decades after the defeat of the Japanese empire.
Saturday’s ceremony was attended by three-thousand servicemembers in uniform, decorated war veterans, independence activists, and family members of deceased independence activists.
Kim Bum-soo, KBS World Radio News.