South Korea’s top court rules Japanese temple is rightful owner of stolen 700-year-old Buddha statue
- The court concluded the South Korean temple lost ownership of the Buddha statue given the number of years it has been in the possession of the Japanese temple
- The Buseok temple claimed the sitting Buddhist Bodhisattva statue was looted from it by Japanese pirates hundreds of years ago
South Korea’s Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that a Buddha statue stolen from a Japanese temple in 2012 belongs to the temple, rejecting a South Korean temple’s claim to ownership of it.
The decision over the 14th-century statue followed a similar ruling by the Daejeon High Court in February. The statue was stolen by South Korean thieves and recovered by South Korean authorities in 2013.
The ruling effectively ends the protracted legal dispute over the roughly 50-centimetre (20-inch) statue of a sitting Buddhist Bodhisattva.
The thieves were caught trying to sell it after returning home and the statue passed into South Korean government custody, but the Buseok temple – about 100 kilometres (62 miles) south of Seoul – filed a lawsuit in 2016 asserting ownership and demanding it be returned.
The top court’s ruling comes at a time when Japan-South Korea relations have been improving after the administration of South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol pledged to resolve a long-standing wartime labour dispute with Japan in March.
At a news conference in Tokyo, Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Hideki Murai said the Japanese government “will urge the South Korean government to promptly return the Buddha statue” to its owner, the Japanese temple, following the ruling.