This article weighs the possibility of ‘colonial crimes’ as a category in the discourse on the problems of settling the past between Korea and Japan, considering the relations between history and laws have been discussed mainly on the Japanese mil...
This article weighs the possibility of ‘colonial crimes’ as a category in the discourse on the problems of settling the past between Korea and Japan, considering the relations between history and laws have been discussed mainly on the Japanese military ‘comfort women’ issue and the effect of the annexation treaty. The Tokyo war crimes trial plays a pivotal role in this linkage of the two issues. The implications of the legal perception that the ‘comfort women’ issue is a sexual slavery and ‘crimes against humanity’ under international law will be considered in connection with the fact that Chosen had been forcibly occupied or ruled as a colony by the Imperial Japan. While the Tokyo trial applied crimes against peace, war crimes, crimes against humanity, the crimes under colonies had not been questioned. On the other hand, the Women’s War Crimes Tribunal of 2000 did apply crimes against humanity to the victims of ‘comfort women’ under the colonial Korea, yet the criminality of the Japanese colonial rule itself was not squarely faced with. Developed on the basis of States, the modern international law treated the colonial question as a domestic matter, but it became an international legal issue as the principle of self-determination had been accepted as a legal one. The Durban Conference in 2001 recognized various wrong-doings under the colonial domination as crimes against humanity, creating the space to talk about colonial crimes. Going beyond the traditional concept of war crimes, the inclusion of crimes in the colonial period in crimes against humanity shows their symbolic value as a universal law of humankind, which contains the duty of every State to protect human rights in any circumstances. In this respect, there arises the need to reevaluate the history in the colonies. The possibility of speaking international law in the colonial situation opens up the path to understanding the Japanese forcible occupation as an aggressive war or colonial crimes in the broad sense.