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Lim Chul-ho, left, the son of a deceased forced laborer, speaks to reporters Monday at the Seoul Central District Court. (Yonhap News)

After a South Korean court ruled against victims of forced labor during the Japanese colonial era who had sued Japanese companies, Seoul said it would continue discussions with the Japanese government about the two countries’ relations.

“We’re keeping an eye on related developments. As far as the government is concerned, we’ll continue deliberations with the Japanese while remaining open to discussing reasonable solutions that are acceptable to both governments and everyone involved. Any solution must also take into account South Korea-Japan relations and respect the decisions of the courts and the rights of the victims,” an official with South Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in regard to the Monday ruling.

Kim Yang-ho, senior judge in the 34th Civil Division at the Seoul Central District Court, dismissed all lawsuits filed against 16 Japanese companies by 85 forced labor victims and their surviving family members. The Japanese companies sued for damages include Nippon Steel, Nissan Chemical, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, and Sumiseki Holdings.

The court found that Article 2 of the claims agreement that South Korea and Japan reached in 1965 “should be interpreted as meaning that, even if South Korean citizens’ individual right to make claims has not been completely exhausted, they’re restricted from exercising that right by suing Japan or Japanese citizens.”

“The fact that domestic law recognizes the illegality of [Japan’s] colonial rule cannot justify non-observance of the claims agreement,” the court said, citing Article 27 of the Vienna Convention.

The court said that words or deeds that contradict the claims agreement “are likely to violate estoppel under international law.” Estoppel is a principle that bans parties from engaging in behavior that goes against what they’ve already said or done.

This district court’s ruling is notable in the sense that it contradicts a previous en banc ruling by the Supreme Court (2013 Da 61381). In October 2018, the Supreme Court found that “the forced labor victims’ right to claim damages is not subject to the claims agreement because they are claiming compensation for crimes against humanity by Japanese companies that were directly linked to [Japan’s] wars of aggression and illegal colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula.”

In that case, the Supreme Court upheld the Seoul High Court’s ruling that Nippon Steel should pay each of the forced labor victims 100 million won (US$89,851) in compensation.

Another notable aspect of this case is that the court took foreign policy into consideration.

“When we consider the adverse international effect” of accepting the plaintiffs’ appeal and liquidating the assets of the Japanese defendants, the court said, “that would not be permissible, since it would mean overstepping our authority by violating the broader constitutional principle of maintaining order and national security.”

The court seemed to be actively considering the fact that South Korea-Japan relations degenerated severely because of pushback from Tokyo following the Supreme Court’s 2018 ruling on compensation for forced labor. Even today, the two countries’ relations have not recovered.

The court reinforced that interpretation in an explanatory document in which it said that “as a constitutional body, we have no choice but to make this ruling to protect the constitution, the state, and the citizens to whom sovereignty belongs.”

“The court concerned itself with matters that are within the purview of the president and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. That’s very irregular,” said Lee Sang-hui, a lawyer with a long history of involvement in lawsuits about postwar compensation in South Korea and Japan.

Lee said the court’s ruling “exactly mirrored the ruling of Japan’s Supreme Court. Our courts should refrain from dismissing lawsuits using the general principle of estoppel,” she said.

“This is the same logic as that used by Japan’s Supreme Court 20 years ago. The fact that this is the court of first instance may give it symbolic significance, but the fundamentals [of the case] won’t change on appeal,” said Yang Gi-ho, professor at Sungkonghoe University.

The South Korean government doesn’t seem to think this ruling will have much of an impact on South Korea-Japan relations.

Some think the ruling could positively affect efforts to organize a bilateral summit between the leaders of South Korea and Japan, or a trilateral summit with the US president, on the sidelines of the G7 summit, which will be held in the UK from Friday to Sunday. But a government official said “there’s little possibility of that happening.”

The government does seem somewhat relieved that there’s no chance that this ruling will further weaken South Korea-Japan relations. But since the Japanese government already maintains that lawsuits by forced labor victims aren’t valid, it probably won’t have much of a positive effect, either.

By Kim Ji-eun, staff reporter

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