{"id":23659,"date":"2018-11-29T06:24:37","date_gmt":"2018-11-29T06:24:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=23659"},"modified":"2018-11-29T06:24:37","modified_gmt":"2018-11-29T06:24:37","slug":"s-korean-court-orders-compensation-to-wartime-forced-labourers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=23659","title":{"rendered":"S Korean court orders compensation to wartime forced labourers"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

South Korea’s top court ruled on Thursday that Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries must compensate 28 South Koreans for forced labour during World War II in a ruling that drew an immediate rebuke from Tokyo.<\/p>\n

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 for their wartime forced labour.<\/p>\n

The court upheld a 2013 appeals court decision that Mitsubishi must pay 80 million won ($71,000) in compensation to each of the 23 plaintiffs.<\/p>\n

In a separate ruling, the court also ordered Mitsubishi to pay up to $134,000 to each of five plaintiffs or their families.<\/p>\n

\n\n\n\n\n
\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\n

South Koreans mark 72 years since end of Japanese rule<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n

‘Deeply regrettable’<\/h2>\n

Mitsubishi called the verdict “deeply regrettable”, saying in a statement it would discuss its response with the Japanese government.<\/p>\n

Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono issued a statement condemning the court’s decision, which he said was unacceptable.<\/p>\n

“This fundamentally overturns the legal basis for friendly ties between Japan and South Korea and is extremely regrettable,” Kono said.<\/p>\n

The five former labourers had previously tried legal action in Japan, but their cases were dismissed on the grounds that the South Koreans right to reparation was terminated by a 1965 treaty that normalised diplomatic ties between the two countries.<\/p>\n

However, the South Korean Supreme Court upheld last month’s ruling that Japan’s occupation of the peninsula was illegal.<\/p>\n

“The treaty does not cover the right of the victims of forced labour to compensation for crimes against humanity committed by a Japanese company in direct connection with the Japanese government’s illegal colonial rule and war of aggression against the Korean Peninsula,” the court said in a statement.<\/p>\n

‘I feel great’<\/h2>\n

Kim Seong-ju, a 90-year-old plaintiff in the second case, said she was sent to Japan when she was 15 with the recommendation of her teacher, who was a Japanese national.<\/p>\n

“I was told that I could go to middle and high school and study more, but it turned out I had to work at the factory all the time,” Kim told a news conference after the ruling, showing her permanently injured hand. “Now I feel great.”<\/p>\n

Japan and South Korea share a bitter history that includes Japan’s 1910-45 colonisation of the Korean Peninsula and the use of comfort women, Japan’s euphemism for girls and women, many of them Korean, forced to work in military brothels.<\/p>\n

The rows over wartime history have long been a stumbling block for relations between the East Asian neighbours, sparking concern their joint efforts to rein in North Korea’s nuclear programme could be affected.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

South Korea’s top court ruled on Thursday that Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries must compensate 28 South Koreans for forced labour during World War II in 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…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":23660,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23659"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23659\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/23660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}