Comedian donates W10 mil. for wartime labor victims

Sep 3, 2019

Yoo Byung-jae

Comedian Yoo Byung-jae has donated 10 million won ($8,200) to help build a memorial hall in commemoration of Koreans forced into hard labor by Japan during the World War II.

The celebrity, managed by Sandbox Network, posted on Instagram a screen capture of a bank transaction he made on Monday. The money was given to the KEB Hana Bank account of Beautiful Foundation Utoro. Beautiful Foundation is a Korean non-profit charity organization that campaigns and collects money for the memorial hall project. Utoro is a Japanese town in Kyoto Prefecture where the Korean victims were held.

The transaction's memo said "September donation Utoro."

Despite Yoo's donation, the project's fund is still short of 30 million won, according to reports.

During wartime in 1941, the Korean community in Utoro was forced to build an airfield. When Japan lost the war, the Koreans were left there and have been there for generations.

About 60 Korean-Japanese households reportedly suffer from ethnic discrimination, and the town is under a demolition order.

The foundation says that if the village disappears, so will its history.

The celebrity's donation came amid tension between the countries following the Korea Supreme Court's ruling last year ordering Japanese steel companies to compensate Koreans forced to work for the companies during World War II.

The decision upset the Japanese government, motivating the Shinzo Abe administration to restrict exports of semi-conductor materials to South Korea and a removal of South Korea from Japan's "whitelist" of preferential trading partners. The Korean government retaliated by withdrawing from a bilateral military information sharing agreement and delisting Japan from its own whitelist.