Ties between the US and its Asian allies have long been complicated by grievances related to Japan's brutal rule of the Korean Peninsula from 1910 to 1945, when hundreds of thousands of Koreans were mobilised as forced labourers for Japanese companies or sex slaves at Tokyo's wartime brothels.He met with Japanese PM Fumio Kishida in Cambodia in November, in the first bilateral summit between the countries in three years, where they expressed a commitment to swiftly resolve "pending" bilateral issues, which clearly referred to the forced-labour dispute.During Thursday's public hearing at the National Assembly, South Korean Foreign Ministry official Seo Min-jung said her government's priority was to arrange payments as quickly as possible."The Japanese companies have reduced much of their economic activity in South Korea and withdrawn (many of their) assets, so it's not even clear whether a liquidation process would be enough to provide compensation to the plaintiffs," Ms Seo said.Japan reacted furiously after the South Korean rulings in 2018 and subsequently placed export controls on chemicals vital to South Korea's semiconductor industry in 2019, citing the deterioration of trust between the countries."