Court sides with victims' families in wartime forced labor suit

A relative of a late victim of Japan's wartime forced labor speaks to reporters in front of Gwangju District Court after winning a damages suit on Thursday. [YONHAP]

Gwangju District Court on Thursday sided with relatives of late wartime forced labor victims in a damages suit filed against Japanese steelmaker Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.

In the suit filed by 15 family members of 11 forced laborers, the court ordered the Japanese company to pay 100 million won ($ 75,000) in compensation per late victim.

Each relative will receive between 19 million won and 100 million won.

The plaintiffs claimed that their late relatives were forcibly mobilized to work at industrial sites in Japan, including Mitsubishi Heavy Industries’ aircraft plant in Nagoya, during the 1910-45 Japanese colonization of Korea.

The damage suit was first filed in 2019 and lasted four years as the Japanese defendant delayed the service of process for a year.

The only surviving victim involved in the suit died as the trial grew protracted.

The plaintiffs faced various difficulties, such as a lack of evidence, as all the actual victims were dead.

The relatives also had a hard time as the victims were reluctant to talk about their experiences while they were alive.

The legal team for Mitsubishi Heavy Industries argued that the evidence against the company was weak.

However, the plaintiffs’ legal team retorted that although they had asked the Japanese companies and the Japanese government for documents in their possession related to forced labor, the Japanese side repeatedly said no such documents existed.

“After coming back to Korea, my father suffered a lot due to injuries he received as a forced laborer,” one of the victim's relatives said after the trial.

“What he went through was unfair, and, unfortunately, we couldn’t get an apology from the Japanese side,” the family member added.

From 2019 to 2020, 87 victims of Japan’s wartime forced labor filed damage suits against 11 Japanese companies.

The lawsuits were a second wave of lawsuits filed by forced labor victims following the Supreme Court's landmark rulings in 2018.

The Supreme Court's 2018 rulings recognized the victims' right to individually demand compensation for forced labor during the Japanese occupation of Korea.

Last month, Gwangju District Court partially sided with four forced labor victims in a damages suit filed in 2020 against Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. The company appealed the decision on Feb. 7.

A total of 15 damages suits are being tried in Gwangju, including Thursday’s case, against Japanese companies like Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Mitsubishi Materials. Gwangju High Court is processing two appellate cases, while 13 first trials are under way at Gwangju District Court.

BY KIM JI-YE [kim.jiye@joongang.co.kr]