All events · The World Wars
Japanese Wartime Mobilisation of Korean and Chinese Forced Labour
1939–1945 · East & Southeast Asia
Displacement
Displaced
800,000
Japanese government figures record roughly 670,000 Koreans brought to the Japanese home islands under labour mobilisation programmes between 1939 and 1945, rising to about 800,000 including those mobilised within Korea and in Sakhalin and the South Seas; South Korean official commissions have put the total number of Koreans mobilised for labour across the empire far higher, in the millions, counting short-term and local conscription. A Japanese foreign ministry survey completed in 1946 recorded 38,935 Chinese labourers forcibly transported to Japan, of whom 6,830 died there. The figures come from Japanese wartime labour administration records and the 1946 foreign ministry report, and from the Korean Truth Commission on Forced Mobilisation established in 2004.
Share of the population affected
3.4%
of the population of colonial Korea at the 1940 census, the main source of wartime conscripted labour, 1940
Killed
20,000–60,000
deaths in transit or in camps
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What happened
From 1939 Japan met wartime labour shortages by recruiting, and from 1944 formally conscripting, workers from colonial Korea and Taiwan and by transporting Chinese prisoners and civilians to Japan. Labourers worked in coal and metal mines, shipyards, steel plants and construction under conditions of confinement, low or withheld pay and high accident and death rates; among the best documented cases are the Hanaoka mine, where Chinese labourers revolted in June 1945 and were killed in the suppression, and the Hashima and Takashima coal mines. Compensation claims have been litigated for decades. Japan holds that all claims arising from the colonial period were settled by the 1965 Treaty on Basic Relations and its claims agreement with the Republic of Korea, under which Japan provided grants and loans. On 30 October 2018 the Supreme Court of Korea held that the 1965 agreement did not extinguish individual claims for damages arising from illegal colonial rule and ordered Nippon Steel, and in a subsequent ruling Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, to compensate former labourers; Japan called the rulings a violation of international law, and the dispute led to trade restrictions in 2019. In March 2023 the South Korean government announced that a domestic foundation would pay the judgments, a solution rejected by some plaintiffs.
Parties
The Japanese state and Japanese companies conscripted Korean, Chinese and Taiwanese workers for mines, shipyards and factories in Japan and its empire
Disputed
Japan and South Korea disagree fundamentally over whether individual claims survived the 1965 treaty, and over the terminology, with Japan preferring 'former civilian workers from the Korean Peninsula' to 'forced labour'; the totals mobilised also differ greatly between Japanese wartime records and Korean commission findings.
The denominator
The colonial census of 1940 counted about 23.5 million people in Korea. Estimates of mobilisation vary with definition: roughly 670,000-800,000 Koreans were taken to Japan proper for labour between 1939 and 1945, while counts that include mobilisation within Korea and across the empire run to several million; around 40,000 Chinese were also shipped to Japan.
The numerator includes Chinese and Taiwanese labourers who are not part of the Korean denominator, and estimates of Koreans mobilised range from about 670,000 to over five million depending on whether mobilisation inside Korea is counted.
Where the baseline comes from
On the death toll
There is no agreed figure. The 1946 Japanese foreign ministry survey recorded 6,830 deaths among 38,935 Chinese labourers taken to Japan, a rate of about 17 per cent. Deaths among Korean mobilised workers in mines, at construction sites, in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and in shipwrecks such as the Ukishima Maru are estimated in the tens of thousands, with Korean and Japanese estimates differing by a wide margin because the underlying mobilisation totals are themselves disputed.
Documented forms of violence
Forced LabourArbitrary DetentionTortureDenationalization
Conscription orders, confinement in company barracks, withheld wages and punishment of those who fled are documented in Japanese wartime labour records, in the 1946 foreign ministry survey of Chinese labourers and in the evidence accepted by the Korean courts.
Formal findings
- Supreme Court of the Republic of Korea (2018) — Held on 30 October 2018 that individual claims for damages for forced labour under Japanese colonial rule were not extinguished by the 1965 claims agreement, and ordered Nippon Steel to compensate four former labourers; Japan's government rejected the ruling as contrary to international law — source
- International Military Tribunal for the Far East (1948) — Found that forced labour of prisoners of war and civilians, including on the Burma-Siam railway, was carried out as a matter of policy and constituted war crimes — source
Movements mapped
- Korea -> coal mines and shipyards of Kyushu and western Japan670,000
- North China -> mines and construction sites in Japan38,935
Countries touched, on present-day borders
Japan, South Korea, China
Sources
This entry rests only on reference, press or open-edited sources. Treat its figures as indicative and follow the links before relying on them.