Seoul

South Korean National Assembly Speaker Moon Hee-sang has drafted a bill to set up a foundation to settle the current wartime labor dispute with Japan, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported Tuesday.

The draft bill reportedly calls for creating the foundation with the participation of both countries' governments and companies to pay a total of about 300 billion won, or 27.7 billion yen, to 1,500 people including former laborers drafted to work for Japanese companies during Japan's colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula.

In the draft, related Japanese companies are expected to voluntarily make donations to the foundation, according to the Yonhap report.

Moon unveiled the draft at a meeting with former laborers and others Tuesday. He intends to revise the draft if necessary to reflect opinions of former laborers.

He reportedly hopes to introduce the bill within this year, but that looks difficult.

Moon proposed such a foundation in a speech during his visit to Tokyo earlier this month. But details were not made public.

The Yonhap report said the bill envisions that an existing foundation for former laborers will be remade into a new one, to which companies and citizens of both countries would make financial contributions. It is uncertain whether and how the Japanese government will be involved.

The new foundation would also provide assistance to former comfort women who served as prostitutes for Japanese soldiers before and during World War II.

For this, the foundation will use 6 billion won left by a now-defunct foundation for former comfort women set up under a 2015 agreement between the two countries with a financial contribution from the Japanese government.

Moon's move came as Seoul and Tokyo remained at odds over South Korean Supreme Court rulings late last year ordering Japanese companies to pay compensation to South Korean plaintiffs in wartime labor lawsuits.

It remains to be seen whether the Japanese government will support the establishment of the new foundation, as Tokyo maintains the position that the wartime labor issue was resolved by a 1965 bilateral agreement.

[Jiji]