日기업 징용 배상책임 또 인정…법원 '배상 거절은 부당'
We begin with the latest in efforts to ensure Koreans forced into labor by Japanese firms during World War Two receive compensations they deserve.
Another ruling came out today that Hitachi Zosen must pay one victim of that atrocity.
Our Choi Si-young has the story.
On Friday, the Seoul High Court upheld a ruling by a lower court ordering Japanese manufacturer Hitachi Zosen Corporation to pay about 45-thousand U.S. dollars to a Korean national identified only by his surname Lee.
Lee was forced to work at a shipyard in Osaka, Japan in 1944.
There he had to work 8 hours everyday for no pay.
He barely made it back to South Korea on a smuggler's ship in 1945 when Japan was defeated in World War II.
Similar to other recent rulings, the high court dismissed the company's argument that the victim cannot seek damages because of the 1965 agreement between Seoul and Tokyo that restored their diplomatic ties.
That agreement, it said, did not terminate the right of individual victims to file independent damage suits.
In a landmark ruling last year, South Korea's Supreme Court openly acknowledged that principle.
The high court also said that it is against the principle of good faith that the Japanese company would deny the victim compensation just because the statute of limitations had run out.
The court defended the compensation amount,... roughly 45-thousand U.S. dollars,... as appropriate.
Choi Si-young, Arirang News. .
