Victims of Japan’s wartime forced labor and their support groups have strongly denounced the government’s proposal to compensate the victims through a third party rather than wait for non-responsive Japanese companies.

Lee Guk-eon, who heads a civic group devoted to shedding light on the suffering of the victims, told Yonhap News on Thursday that the government has reduced a human rights violation case to a simple case of a financial settlement.

Lee said compensating the victims is a secondary matter, stressing that an apology from Japan must come first.

He went on to say that the provision of compensation with funds collected from South Korean companies would be tantamount to supporting the Japanese government’s claim that the South Korean Supreme Court's ruling was wrong. The Supreme Court in 2018 ordered Japanese companies to compensate the victims.

Lee said that with the latest plan, the government would be destroying the grounds and logic of South Korea’s own claims over the wartime forced labor issue.