Japan: South Korea court orders Japanese firm to compensate forced laborers
The Seoul Central District Court ruled that Nachi-Fujikoshi Corp. must pay five victims 100 million won (about ¥9.4 million) each for being forced to perform hard labor at the firm’s munitions factory in Toyama. The plaintiffs filed a lawsuit with the court in April last year. They were brought to Japan from the Korean Peninsula, then under Japanese colonial rule from 1910 to 1945, under false pretenses and forced to work there without sufficient food. ... In a landmark decision in May 2012, the South Korean Supreme Court ruled that the right of former forced laborers and their families to seek withheld wages and compensation was not invalidated by the 1965 treaty, under which Japan and South Korea normalized ties.