Firm to pay up

South Korean court angers Japan with order to compensate wartime labourers.

SEOUL: South Korea’s top court ruled that Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd must compensate 10 South Koreans for their forced labour during World War Two, a ruling that drew an immediate rebuke from Tokyo.

The decision echoed the Supreme Court’s landmark verdict last month that ruled in favour of South Koreans seeking compensation from Japan’s Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corp.

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.

The rows over wartime history have long been a stumbling block for relations between the East Asian neighbours, sparking concern that it could jeopardise joint efforts to rein in North Korea’s nuclear programme. Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono issued a statement calling the court’s decisions “totally unacceptable”. The ministry summoned the South Korean ambassador to lodge a complaint.

According to official Seoul data, around 780,000 Koreans were conscripted into forced labour by Japan during the 35-year occupation.

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 yesterday upheld a lower court ruling that the firm should pay each of the plaintiffs unpaid wages or compensation worth about 80 million won (RM298,000).

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.

— Reuters Victory: Kim Seong-ju, a victim of wartime forced labour during the Japanese colonial period, cheering with her supporters and relatives of other victims after hearing the court ruling at the Supreme Court in Seoul.