South Korean court orders 2 Japanese companies to compensate wartime Korean workers for forced labor
ABC News
South Korea’s top court has ordered two Japanese companies to financially compensate more of their wartime Korean workers for forced labor
SEOUL, South Korea -- South Korea’s top court ordered two Japanese companies to financially compensate more of their wartime Korean workers for forced labor, as it sided Thursday with its contentious 2018 verdicts that caused a huge setback in relations between the two countries.
But observers say Thursday’s ruling won’t likely hurt bilateral ties much since Seoul and Tokyo, now governed by different leaders, are pushing hard to bolster their partnerships in the face of shared challenges like North Korea’s evolving nuclear threats and China’s increasing assertiveness.
The Supreme Court ruled that Mitsubishi Heavy Industries must provide between 100 million and 150 million won ($76,700 and $115,000) in compensation to each of four plaintiffs — bereaved families of its former employees who were forced to work for the company during Japan’s 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula. The court also said Nippon Steel Corp. must give 100 million won (about $76,700) to each of seven Korean plaintiffs for similar colonial-era forced labor.
In two separate verdicts in 2018, the top South Korean court ordered Mitsubishi and Nippon Steel to compensate a total of 15 other Korean employees for forced labor. That irked Japan, which has insisted all compensation issues were already settled by a 1965 bilateral treaty that normalized their diplomatic relations. But the 2018 South Korean court rulings said the treaty cannot prevent individual rights to seek compensations for forced labor because Japanese companies’ use of such laborers were “acts of illegality against humanity” that were linked to Tokyo’s illegal colonial occupation and its war of aggression.
In Thursday's ruling, the South Korean Supreme Court cited that argument in one of the 2018 verdicts, saying it paved the way for “a judicial remedy for forced labor victims within Republic of Korea." Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi called the ruling “absolutely unacceptable" as it clearly violated the 1965 treaty.