Roundup: 1,004 S.Korean victims sue Japanese firms for wartime forced labor

More than 1,000 South Korean forced labor victims and their bereaved families filed on Tuesday the largest-ever class-action lawsuit against Japanese"war criminal" companies, demanding about 100 billion won (92 million U.S. dollars) in damages.

A total of 1,004 South Korean victims and bereaved families, who were forced to work for Japanese war munitions factories during the devastating war, sued around 60 Japanese firms, including Nippon Steel and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, on Tuesday for unpaid wages and damages for wartime hard labor.

The Asia Victims of the Pacific War Family of the Deceased Association of the Korea filed the damage claim suit with the Seoul Central District Court.

At least 700,000 young Koreans were lured into hard labor by the Japanese companies, which lied that they would be allowed to go to school in return for the work, during the Japanese colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula from 1910 to 1945.

The Japanese"war criminal" enterprises have insisted that the individual damages claim was resolved through the 1965 treaty that normalized diplomatic ties between South Korea and Japan, but the victims said that individual right to claim damages must be treated separately from the inter-governmental agreement.

The damages claim kicked off in December 1995 when some of the victims filed a suit with the Japanese district court in Hiroshima. The suit was dismissed in March 1999, and the appeal was also rejected in January 2005. The highest court of Japan finalized the rejection in November 2007.

The Japanese courts claimed that the statute of limitations had run out, and that the individual claim for damages was resolved through the 1965 treaty between the governments of South Korea and Japan.

The forced labor victims even lost the appeals in their home country, but the South Korean Supreme Court ruled in favor of the victims in May 24, 2012, saying that a line should be drawn between the inter-governmental treaty and the individual damages claim, and that the colonial rule itself was illegal.

As regards the statute of limitations, the Supreme Court ruled that there had been obstacles to the exercising by the victims of their right to sue before 2000. During the period of 1945-1965, Seoul and Tokyo severed diplomatic relations. The 1965 treaty and many Japanese laws had since blocked the victims from filing damages claim.

The 2012 ruling by the Supreme Court was followed by a series of verdict by lower courts of finding guilty of the Japanese"war criminal"enterprises. The high court in Seoul ordered the Japanese firms, including Nippon Steel, in July 2013 to pay 100 million won per victim in damages, which served as the basis for the 100- billion-won suit filed on Tuesday.

The forced labor victims'association plans to file another damages claim suit in the United States to seize the U.S. assets of the Japanese companies, if it wins the class-action lawsuit in South Korea. In the U.S., the Kohn, Swift & Graft, which won the 7. 5-billion-dollar damages claim case for the Holocaust victims from the Nazi Germany, will help the South Korean victims sue the Japanese enterprises.

The association also plans to recruit the second, and third, group of plaintiffs to file for additional damages claims for tens of thousands of the forced labor victims who haven't heard of the class-action move.

According to Chang Duk-hwan, the association's secretary general, millions of Koreans were coerced into working for thousands of Japanese firms to produce military supplies during Japan's colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula from 1910 to 1945.

Those victims performed dangerous tasks without being paid, suffering from hard labor, hunger and even beating. Most of the" war criminal"enterprises disappeared after the end of World War II, but some 60 companies are in operation, including Nippon Steel and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. Endi