Court orders Nippon Steel to compensate war victims
Unprecedented ruling, which Japanese company will appeal, cites 'crimes against humanity'
In an unprecedented ruling, a South Korean court yesterday ordered Japan's Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corp yesterday to compensate four South Koreans for forced labour during Japan's 35-year colonial rule of Korea.
The Seoul High Court ordered the company to pay 100 million Korean won (HK$678,000) to each of the four plaintiffs who joined the case. It rejected Nippon Steel's argument that it was a different entity from the steelmaker that employed the South Koreans.
We have fought for months and years. I feel great. We kept losing in lawsuits in Japan but now back to Korea, we won
Japanese courts have in the past thrown out claims by South Korean and Chinese who suffered at Japanese hands during the second world war, arguing the matter of compensation was closed under the 1965 treaty between the two countries normalising diplomatic ties.
Nippon Steel, which merged with Sumitomo Metal Industries last year, has argued in previous court cases that it was not responsible for the actions of the wartime steelmaker.
The steelmaker engaged in an "inhuman criminal act by mobilising workers for invasionary war causes together with the Japanese government", the court said in the ruling.
The attorney for the plaintiffs, Kim Mi-kyung, said they had no immediate plans to seize company assets in South Korea, but wanted to discuss compensation with the company.
The labour amounted to "crimes against humanity", Judge Yoon Seong-keun said in his ruling, according to the Yonhap news agency.