The National Pension Service (NPS), South Korea’s largest public pension scheme, has 1.57 trillion won ($1.3 billion) exposure to stocks of what was labelled as “war crimes companies” during the World War II, data showed on September 19.

NPS was directly investing some 880 billion won in companies suspected to have contributed to Japanese ruling of the Korean Peninsula during Korea’s colonial era as of February, according to data compiled by the Representative Kang Byung-won, a lawmaker with the ruling Democratic Party of Korea. Its indirect investment into such companies also amounted to 690 billion won.

They included Shin-Etsu Chemical, Toyota Motor, Kubota and Daikin Industries, as well as Mitsubishi Group affiliates, according to the two-term lawmaker.

These companies were among some 300 “war crimes companies” as labelled by the Committee for Assessing Damage from the Compulsory Mobilisation and Supporting the Victims of Compulsory Overseas Mobilisation during Korea’s Resistance against Japan, under the supervision of then-South Korean Prime Minister Kim Hwang-sik in 2012.

The NPS in February had a total of 860.3 trillion won worth of assets, becoming the third-largest pension fund by asset size in the world.

Kang said in a statement that the NPS’ direct investment in such companies “goes against the nationwide anti-Japanese sentiment” and translates into a “failure to abide by the principle of environment, society and governance-centred investing”.

But he also noted that it is nearly impossible for an institutional investor to rule out “war crimes companies” in its portfolio given the context of the Japanese economy.

THE KOREA HERALD/ASIA NEWS NETWORK