第二次世界大戦におけるいわゆる'朝鮮人徴用工'への未払賃金供託事件に関する法的一考察 : 一般市民の蒙る戦争災害の救済

During the World War II, Japan commandeered over one million Koreans, people of one of the former Japan's colonies, to make them work in Japanese military factories and mines. When Japan surrendered to the Allied Forces, Korea was pledged to be conferred independence in due course. Those Korean workers who were emancipated from forced labour by Japan's capitulation were in a great hurry to go back to their home country to be independent soon. At this time, for some reasons nobody knows, they left Japan with arrears of wages due to them to be paid by factories where they worked. There seem to have been some conflicts between factories and Koreans or the Association of Koreans. In accordance with the advice of the Japanese Government, many factories deposited the claimed arrears of wages due to Korean workers in deposit offices of Japan. Over 30 years have passed since then. Even today, it seems, to this writer, that the deposited money has never been reimbursed to former Korean workers who are duly entitled to receive it. This fact means that those Korean people, who suffered from commandeering and forced labour have not received the arrears of wages of over 30 years ago. This sounds to be entirely unfair. Nevertheless, from legal point of view, all procedures in regard to the deposit of the arrears of wages due to Korean workers had been made without any fault. Yet, we can not but feel some sense of unfairness in this case. In this paper, the writer tries to analyse the whole process of the case of unpaied wages of Korean workers. It is a sincere hope of this writer that this study will be of some help to find a way to give rescue for those Korean people who are victims of this complicated case.