"Did You Sell It? Then Give It Back!" Getting Tough... Pro-Japanese Collaborator Property Investigation Committee Revived After 16 Years

The Pro-Japanese Property Investigation Committee, which had disappeared after 2010, is being revived after 16 years.

The Special Act on the Nationalization of Property Belonging to Pro-Japanese Anti-National Collaborators, which contains provisions to confiscate pro-Japanese property and return it to the state, will take effect on December 3 of this year.

Once the law takes effect, the Pro-Japanese Property Investigation Committee will resume operations to investigate property acquired by pro-Japanese anti-national collaborators and revert it to the state.

This special act was formulated to address the institutional vacuum left since the first-generation investigation committee, launched in 2006, was dissolved in 2010, leaving no legal body to discover or investigate new pro-Japanese properties.

In particular, to block attempts by descendants of pro-Japanese collaborators to sell off pro-Japanese property or conceal it by converting it into other forms, the special act explicitly includes even the proceeds from the disposal of such property as subject to confiscation.

A new provision has also been included to award cash rewards to individuals who report and uncover pro-Japanese property, in order to unearth hidden pro-Japanese assets that have remained concealed for a long time.

According to the Ministry of Justice and official white papers, the first-generation investigation committee issued decisions over a four-year period to revert 2,359 plots of land owned by 168 pro-Japanese anti-national collaborators to the state.

For 24 descendants of pro-Japanese anti-national collaborators who had already disposed of pro-Japanese property to others, decisions confirming the pro-Japanese nature of the property were made.

The property reverted to the state through this process was tallied at 237.3 billion won based on the market value at the time.

After the activities of the first-generation investigation committee concluded, the Ministry of Justice continued the recovery work through lawsuits and other means targeting previously identified pro-Japanese properties.

In this process, in October of last year, the Ministry of Justice filed an unjust enrichment return lawsuit demanding the return of 7.8 billion won pocketed from selling 31 plots of land in Howon-dong, Uijeongbu, Gyeonggi Province, against the descendants of Yi Hae-seung, who was designated as a pro-Japanese anti-national collaborator.

The Ministry of Justice launched a preparation team for the establishment of the investigation committee, headed by Prosecutor Lee Young-chang, this past June.

The preparation team, which has received dispatched personnel from related ministries such as the Ministry of the Interior and Safety and the Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs, plans to overhaul relevant regulations and establish investigation plans prior to the official launch of the new investigation committee.

Once the new investigation committee is launched, the scope of investigations is expected to expand, focusing on pro-Japanese properties that could not be verified during the first-generation investigations or that have newly come to light since then.

(Reported by Kim Jin-woo | Video by Na Hong-hee | Graphics by Lee Jung-joo | Produced by SBS Digital News)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.