A statue representing a Korean victim of forced work by Japan was set up on Aug. 12, 2017, at Yongsan Station Plaza in Seoul to raise awareness of Japan's war crime and commemorate the victims. (Korea.net)

By Lee Jihae

KBS on March 30 said a directory shows how Koreans forced by Japan in the early 20th century to work in coal mines on Hashima (Battleship) Island were not paid.

The public broadcast network said this finding refutes the Japanese government's claim that Koreans on the island faced no discrimination.

KBS reported this on its main TV news program "KBS News 9" in the story titled "No discrimination… 1,299 people owed wages."

Written in 1946 shortly after the Pacific theater of World War II ended, the directory was published by Mitsubishi, which ran the coal mines on Hashima, for the Japanese Ministry of Health.

The directory contains the names, ages, registered residences and unpaid wages of the Korean victims. The wages owed to 1,299 of the victims here reached JPY 224,862, whose monetary value would be billions of KRW today, KBS said.

The news program also said that in 2015, the Japanese government registered Hashima as a UNESCO World Heritage and denied that the Koreans there faced discrimination. On March 31 last year, KBS added, the Industrial Heritage Information Centre was opened in Tokyo but contained no records of discrimination against Koreans and instead featured testimonies denying it.

jihlee08@korea.kr