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Court orders Mitsubishi to compensate 107-year-old Korean victim of Japan's wartime forced labor

Published: 07 Jun. 2025, 10:59

Kim Han-soo, center, a Korean victim of Japan's wartime forced labor, speaks during a press conference in southern Seoul, in this file photo taken April 4, 2018, over damages suits seeking compensation from Japanese companies. [YONHAP]

An appeals court has ruled in favor of a 107-year-old Korean victim of Japan's wartime forced labor in a damages suit filed against Japan's Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, sources said Saturday.

The civil appeals division of the Seoul Central District Court overturned a lower court's ruling handed down in 2022 that rejected Kim Han-soo's suit seeking compensation from the Japanese company on the grounds that the case's statute of limitations had expired.

In May, the appeals court ordered Mitsubishi Heavy Industries to pay 100 million won ($73,400) in compensation to Kim in a ruling that came about 80 years after he was conscripted into Japan's wartime forced labor.

Despite the court's ruling, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries is not likely to pay the compensation.

Kim said he was forced to work in a shipyard run by the Japanese firm in 1944 during Japan's 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula.

In 2022, the lower court ruled against Kim on the grounds that he filed a damages suit in 2015, three years after the Supreme Court acknowledged the legal right to claim damages by Korean victims of Japan's forced labor for the first time.

According to civil law, the legal right to claim damages expires three years after the victim discovers the harm and identifies the offender.

But the appeals court ruled in favor of Kim, judging that the statute of limitations related to forced labor-related damages suits should be calculated based on a separate 2018 ruling by the Supreme Court, not by the top court's 2012 ruling.

In 2018, the Supreme Court ordered Japanese firms to compensate Korean victims of Tokyo's forced labor in a landmark ruling. But Japan has claimed all such reparation issues were settled under a 1965 treaty to normalize bilateral relations.

Yonhap