The justice ministry said it will hand over to the South Korean government a list of Koreans who were forced to work in Japan during the war and repatriated after the conflict without receiving any pay.

Even the admission that the records exist is a breakthrough as previous Japanese governments had steadfastly refused to admit that they had survived the war. The documents will detail the 200,000 Koreans who worked without pay at mines and factories and list the amount each should have received.

Before it was elected into power in August, the Democratic Party of Japan promised that it would "address the POW problem" as well as issues surrounding Asian women forced into prostitution for the Imperial Japanese Army and people from neighbouring Asian nations forced to work as slave labourers.