戰時期日本に動員された朝鮮人炭・鑛夫の賃金と民族間の格差

Using materials published by researchers who have taken the position of “forced
removal and forced labor,” we have observed that wartime wages paid to Korean coal
and metal mine workers in Japan were high enough to allow a degree of choice in
allocating earnings between remittances to family in Korea and local expenditure. We
were able to confirm that the assertion made in prior research that “wages were either
never paid, or amounted to a mere pittance” is not supported by the available
empirical data. Furthermore, we found that the wages of Korean coal and metal mine
workers were not significantly different from the wages paid to Japanese workers.
Thus, we have shown in this paper that the assertion of “ethnicity-based wage
discrimination” found in prior research cannot be proven to be correct. In addition,
various research and empirical data exist suggesting that the wage differential
between Korean and Japanese workers actually decreased during the war years.