Japan's legacy of forced labor haunts ties with neighbors
For years, Yeom Chan-soon was haunted by the cracking sound of a leather belt eating into the flesh of a fellow Korean mine worker being punished for trying to escape from forced labor in Japan. The companies, among the biggest names in Japan Inc., such as Mitsubishi and Mitsui, say such issues were settled by a treaty decades ago. Critics say Japan has failed to fully reckon with those wrongs that date back to the late 1890s and lasted through the colonization of the Korean peninsula, until the end of World War II in 1945.