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Top S. Korea court orders Japanese firm to pay out over forced labour
SEOUL, Nov 29, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – South Korea’s top court on Thursday ordered a
Japanese heavy industries giant to pay compensation over forced wartime
labour — the latest in a series of decisions to strain ties between the two
neighbours.
South Korea and Japan are both democracies and US allies faced with an
increasingly assertive neighbour China and the long-running threat of
nuclear-armed North Korea.
But their own ties have remained icy for years by bitter disputes over
history and territory stemming from Japan’s brutal 1910-45 colonial rule of
the Korean peninsula, with forced labour and wartime sexual slavery key
examples.
According to official Seoul data, around 780,000 Koreans were conscripted
into forced labour by Japan during the 35-year occupation, not including the
women forced into sexual slavery for Japanese troops.
Among those forced to work at the factories for Japanese firms, six
survivors filed a lawsuit against The Mitsubishi Heavy Industries in 2000
seeking compensation.
Seoul’s Supreme Court on Thursday upheld a lower court ruling that the
firm should pay each of the plaintiffs unpaid wages or compensation worth
about 80 million won ($71,197).
The same court, in a ruling on a similar, separate case on Thursday, also
ordered Mitsubishi to pay compensation of 100 million to 150 million won to a
group of five people for forced wartime labour at its plants.
Many said they had been tricked by their Japanese teachers at elementary
schools into going to Japan to “study” but were instead forced to work at
Mitsubishi plants producing aircrafts with no or little pay for years.
Both of the two groups filed lawsuits in Seoul after Japanese courts had
dismissed their claims seeking compensation.
Japan says the victims’ right to sue had been extinguished by the 1965
treaty which saw Seoul and Tokyo restore diplomatic ties and included a
reparation package of about $800 million in grants and cheap loans.
But recent court rulings in Seoul — including Thursday’s rulings —
argued that the forced labour for Japanese firms was not included in the
controversial treaty.
The Supreme Court late last month ordered Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal to
pay compensations worth 100 million won to four people over forced labour
during World War II — a decision that drew anger from Tokyo.
Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono slammed the latest rulings he
described “extremely regrettable and totally unacceptable” and demand that
Seoul take “immediate actions to remedy such breach of international law.”
“Above all, the decisions completely overthrow the legal foundation of the
friendly and cooperative relationship that Japan and… Korea have developed
since the normalisation of diplomatic relations in 1965,” Kono said in a
statement.
BSS/AFP/MR/ 1022 hrs