SEOUL: Japanese government cannot be forced to provide tax compensation to South Korean women forced to sexually enslave the Tokyo military during World War II, a Seoul court said, adding new legal uncertainties to a long-standing dispute that diplomacy has failed to resolve.
Wednesday’s ruling by the Seoul Central District Court broke with a verdict for a similar case, known to the same court just a few months ago. In January, a different group of judges ordered the Japanese government to pay about $ 90,000 in reparations to a dozen Korean women.
The two verdicts disagreed on whether the Japanese government should enjoy state immunity, a provision of international law that protects sovereign countries from being tried in foreign courts. The January verdict concluded that the atrocities against the victims of South Korea were so serious that they replaced the state immunity exception.
On Wednesday, judges cited a 2012 ruling by the International Court of Justice, which launched a World War II case on Italian victims seeking reparations in Germany, using state immunity as a basis. Nearly two dozen former sex slaves had asked Japan for compensation of about $ 2.7 million.
“This court does not agree that victims have the right to claim compensation,” the judges said in their ruling. “But right now you can’t afford to sue a foreign country.”
Plaintiffs’ attorneys said after Wednesday’s sentencing that they are likely to appeal. South Korea’s courts of appeal – and possibly the country’s Supreme Court – will issue final decisions on the conflicting decisions of the lower courts. These procedures can take years, local legal experts say.
Of the nearly two dozen plaintiffs, which include family members or sympathizers, only four of the victims remain alive, their lawyers said. One of them, Lee Yong-soo, 92, arrived in court in a wheelchair and was carrying a cane. “All I can say is I’m blown away,” he said.
These cases are part of a series of disputes between the two key US allies in the US. Disputes are often based on, or accentuated by, unresolved tensions decades old.
In 2019, the two countries argued over Japan’s decision to curb some technology-related exports to South Korea, and Tokyo eliminated its neighbor as a favored trading partner. Seoul has attacked Tokyo’s announcement last week that it would release water with a radioactive form of hydrogen into the Pacific Ocean. Victims of forced labor in Korea have won legal victories in recent years for unpaid work during the colonial government of Japan from 1910 to 1945, annoying the Tokyo government.
Over the decades, Japan has repeatedly stated that it has already paid for financial reparations. Tokyo refers to two agreements with the Seoul government, including a 2015 agreement, in which Shinzo Abe, then Japanese Prime Minister, expressed his “most sincere apologies” to Korean women.
The six-year agreement was intended to address Korean victims at the center of “women of consolation” cases. Japan agreed to provide $ 8.3 million to create a foundation to help Korean women. But the administration of South Korean President Moon Jae-in withdrew from the deal after taking office in 2017, saying the deal did not fully meet the wishes of the victims.
South Korean judges in Wednesday’s ruling said the 2015 agreement was still in force.
Tokyo welcomed the decision, deeming it appropriate “insofar as it reflects the Japanese government’s position on sovereign immunity,” government chief spokesman Katsunobu Kato said. Relations between the two countries “are in unprecedented straits, because South Korea has not observed international law,” Kato added.
South Korea’s higher courts must now determine which of the two court decisions is more justified, legal experts said. At most, the courts could only seize and liquidate Japanese government assets in South Korea to compensate the victims, they said.
Mrs. Lee, the plaintiff, has said she supports taking the case to the International Court of Justice. Doing so, given the Italy-Germany precedent, would likely result in a decision by Japan. But the international court could recognize that Japan committed war crimes and this could cause the Tokyo government to behave differently, said Ethan Shin, a legal expert at the Institute of Legal Studies at Yonsei University in Seoul. .
All the victims really want is a sincere apology from Japan, not the money, said Shin, who has provided legal advice to victims of sexual slavery, though he has not represented them in court.
Past Japanese apologies, including those of Mr. Abe in 2015, fell short in part because Japanese officials have taken subsequent actions that have undermined the sincerity of previous expressions of pain, he said.
—Peter Landers of Tokyo contributed to this article.
Write to Andrew Jeong to [email protected]
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