I've got an app that is regularly using classes written in Kotlin which are accessed by other classes and their methods written in Java.

I had the following class in Java:

public class MyDataClass {
    public String color;
    public String action;
}

I've decided to move it to Kotlin:

class MyDataClass {
    var color: String = ""
    var action: String = ""
}

Upon recompiling, I'm now getting the following error message:

/myPath/MyApp.java:[93,20] color has private access in myapp.command.MyDataClass

I get a similar error for action.

Per the Kotlin reference, the default visibility modifier for class and properties (and a bunch of other things) is public.

Why are these properties being treated as private?