S.Korea's top court upholds order penalizing Japanese firm over compensation to forced labor victims

By Berk Kutay Gokmen

ISTANBUL (AA) – South Korea's Supreme Court on Thursday reaffirmed a lower court's decision, requiring Nippon Steel to pay 100 million won (approximately $67,000) in compensation to South Korean plaintiffs for wartime labor, rejecting the company's appeal.

The court rejected the company's appeal, marking the first Supreme Court ruling in a follow-up case since the 2018 decision affirming the right of wartime labor victims to seek damages, according to the Chosun Daily.

The lawsuit, filed in 2019 by the children of Jeong Hyeong-pal, who was forced to work at a Japanese ironworks between 1940 and 1942, argued that his labor was part of Japan's wartime actions during World War II.

Though an initial court dismissed the case due to a statute of limitations, the appellate court recognized that the right to claim damages had not expired, citing the 2018 ruling that Japanese companies must compensate forced labor victims.

In August this year, South Korea seized shares worth 780 million won (nearly $564,000) of two Japanese steel companies, one of them being Nippon Steel, in connection with lawsuits over forced labor during Japan’s colonial rule, which followed legal action by South Koreans who said they were forced to work for Japanese firms during World War II.