Mitsubishi ordered in S. Korea to indemnify forced labor victims during WW II

South Korea's appeals court on Wednesday ordered the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries to indemnify some of the victims mobilized to the Japanese company for forced labor during the World War II.

The high court in Gwangju, some 330 km south of Seoul, upheld a lower court's ruling that Mitsubishi should pay damages to four victims and one bereaved family member as the company forcibly mobilized the victims for hard labor under the 1910-45 Japanese colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula.

Mitsubishi was ordered to pay 562 million won (506,800 U.S. dollars) in damages to them, lower than 680 million won imposed by the lower court.

The victims had lost compensation lawsuits in Japan, but the South Korean Supreme Court ruled in May 2012 that they were entitled to private damages claim as the mobilization itself was " an unlawful act under Japan's forced annexation of Korea."

Yang Keum-deok and other victims filed a damages claim lawsuit against the Japanese company in October 2012 with the district court in Gwangju, which ruled in November 2013 that Mitsubishi should indemnify the victims for damages. The company immediately appealed.

In the meantime, the local court offered to Mitsubishi coming to an agreement through "mediation" considering the old age of the victims, but the company rejected the proposal.

The victims were mobilized in mid-1944 to the Nagoya aircraft manufacturing plant of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries when they were teenagers.

When Yang, 87, was in her sixth year at an elementary school, the Japanese principal deceitfully told her and her classmates that they could earn money and go to a good school in Japan.

They were taken to the Mitsubishi factory to produce Zero fighter jets from June 1944, Yang told reporters last week.

After surviving harsh labor conditions for a young girl to bear, Yang returned to South Korea in October 1945, but she had difficulties in getting married as others mistook her for having been a "comfort woman," or Koreans forced into sex slavery for Japan's military brothels during the World War II, when she was in Japan.

Yang managed to get married, but her husband left her 10 years later after learning belatedly that she had been to Japan. She chose not to denounce her husband for his unfaithfulness, hostility and distrust of her. Yang is now living in dire economic conditions with no family member to turn to for financial support. Endi