“I cannot die like this. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and the Japanese government must apologize without delay”.

On the 9th, 96-year-old Jeong Sin-yeong, a victim of Japan’s wartime forced mobilization, personally visited the Tokyo headquarters of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Nippon Steel to urge an apology and compensation. Two bereaved family members of a victim who had been forcibly mobilized to Nippon Steel and died also joined her.

Grandmother Jeong’s group and Japanese civic organizations took part that day in the “Marunouchi Action,” visiting the companies responsible for war crimes to demand compensation and an apology. Conscientious Japanese civic groups have been holding monthly rallies since last year in front of Nippon Steel near Tokyo’s Marunouchi to press for the “fulfillment of compensation obligations.”

The grandmother, in a wheelchair due to mobility difficulties, and the Japanese civic groups paid successive protest visits that day to the headquarters of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Nippon Steel. It was the first time she had personally visited the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries headquarters where she had been forcibly mobilized.

In May 1944, shortly after graduating from Naju National School (elementary school) in South Jeolla Province, she was deceived by the promise that “if you go to Japan, they will let you study and you can attend middle school,” and was forcibly mobilized to Mitsubishi Heavy Industries’ aircraft manufacturing plant in Nagoya.

She had suffered from hunger and forced labor, and in December of that year she also went through the Tonankai earthquake. Six friends who had been forcibly mobilized with her died in the quake.

After Korea’s liberation, she kept the fact of her forced mobilization to herself, but in 2020, vowing to secure an apology from Japan before she dies, she filed a damages suit against Mitsubishi Heavy Industries with the Gwangju District Court.

When she sought to check Japan’s welfare pension records to prove the harm she suffered, the Japanese government in 2022 even deposited 931 won (99 yen) into her account as a so-called “withdrawal allowance.” She won in the first instance in 2024, but Mitsubishi Heavy Industries appealed, and the case is now continuing at the Gwangju High Court.

At a rally held that afternoon at the House of Councillors Members’ Office Building in Japan’s National Diet, she also made public a letter-style statement urging an apology. The grandmother said, “During the day I live in a care facility, and without a cane it is hard for me to move,” adding, “Others say, ‘Why are you trying to go to Japan?’ but when I think of my friends who died, I cannot just sit by.”

Grandmother Jeong said, “It’s not that I covet money; what is unbearable is the many years I had to live holding my breath like a criminal,” and demanded, “I cannot die like this. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and the Japanese government must apologize as soon as possible.”