"South Korean court orders Japanese firms to compensate more wartime Korean workers for forced labor", 21 December 2023

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 on the firms that caused a huge setback in relations between the Asian neighbors...

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 — all 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, also all bereaved relatives, 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 that the treaty can’t prevent individuals from seeking compensation 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,”...

Eleven of the 15 former forced laborers or their families involved in the 2018 rulings had accepted compensation under Seoul’s third-party reimbursement plan, but the remaining four still refuse to accept it, according to Lee Kook Un, a leader of their support group. He said that about 70 other suits seeking damages from more than 10 Japanese companies are still pending in South Korean courts...