A group of 1,000 scholars from South Korea and Japan on Wednesday demanded Tokyo's admission that the 1910 Japan-Korea annexation treaty was void because it was flawed and illegal.
In the first such move to be made jointly by people from both countries, the scholars sent a strongly-worded letter to Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan. Japan insists that the treaty was legally signed at Korea's will.
Japan ruled Korea for 36 years until its defeat in World War II.
"Japan's annexation of Korea was an imperialistic act and one that was unjust and wrong, carried out after fierce resistance from Koreans from all walks of life, from the king to ordinary people, was put down by the force
of the Japanese military," the scholars said in the letter.
The annexation treaty was signed by pro-Japan Prime Minister Lee Wan-yong of Korea and Japan's governor general of Korea, Terauchi Masatake, after Korea's King Sunjong refused to sign it. The treaty said that Korea's king "makes complete and permanent cession" to Japan of over all of Korea.
The day it was signed, Aug. 29, is called "the day of national humiliation" in Korea.
The two nations normalized diplomatic relations in 1965 with the Treaty on Basic Relations between the Republic of Korea and Japan, which confirmed that all bilateral agreements signed before Aug. 22, 1910, are "already null and void."
But the description is still ambiguous in Japan, whose government claims the annexation was valid at the time, even though it was later nullified by Korea's liberation in 1945.
In the letter, the scholars wrote, "The foreword of the treaty is false, and so is the main text. There are also serious flaws to its signing procedure and formalities. As the procedure leading up the annexation was unjust and wrong, so is the treaty itself."
They also called on Japan to "make more active efforts" to resolve the issues of Korean sex slaves and forced laborers who were mobilized by Japan during the occupation period. Japan says the issues were settled with state compensations paid in 1965.
The signature campaign for the letter was launched in December by Kim Young-ho, president of Yuhan University in Korea, and Wada Haruki, emeritus professor of the University of Tokyo and a leading scholar on North Korea.
Participants on the Korean side include Paik Nak-chung, an emeritus professor at Seoul National University; the poets Ko Un and Kim Ji-ha; and Park Won-soon, a lawyer and founder of the non-profit charity the Beautiful
Foundation.