A Liberal Democratic Party panel has drawn up a plan to provide 3 million yen per person for Koreans and Taiwanese living in Japan who were drafted by the Imperial Japanese Army and disabled by war injuries, panel officials said Wednesday.
Disabled South Korean, North Korean and Taiwanese who served in the Japanese army are ineligible for Japanese disability pensions because they were stripped of their citizenship after the war.
Those who would be affected were considered Japanese citizens when they were drafted; at the time, Korea and Taiwan were under Japan's colonial rule.
Under the panel's plan, a lump sum of 3 million yen would be provided for each disabled Korean and Taiwanese who has been living in Japan since the prewar period. The one-time payment would also be given to the families of such veterans who have died.
The LDP is considering drafting a bill on the matter by the end of March after discussing it with its coalition partners, the Liberal Party and New Komeito, panel members said.
The debate among the coalition parties, however, is unlikely to go smoothly because some coalition members say a one-time payment is insufficient to compensate for the suffering of those people, the members added.
In 1988, Japan paid 2 million yen each to the bereaved families in Taiwan of Taiwanese who had served in the Imperial Japanese Army.