8 May 1956

To Minister Yong Shik Kim
From the President
Your five point resume of 3 May relating to the Korean residents in Japan is, as far as I reason, in the main, correct. I will ask some of our secretaries to check the record of the conference minutes but I think in general your outline is correct.
When the Japanese requested deportation of all the Korean residents, we told them they could not do that because the Koreans had not gone to Japan of their own volition. The Japanese took them forcibly to serve them in forced labor. They gave then permanent residence, but treated them neither as Japanese citizens nor as foreign aliens. We agreed at that time to accept the Koreans who entered Japan after the war, but instead of sending the illegal entrants they included some of the residents of Japan so we sent them back. The Japanese government then put them all in prison without any charge or trial.
Our government should demand the damage done to the Koreans for doing this in violation of the agreement. In this connection, we must make it very clear that the Japanese illegally kept some of our citizens in prison without legal charge and trial.
The matter of compensation for these people should be settled before they talk of repatriation of Korean residents in Japan.