SEOUL, South Korea — A South Korean court docket on Friday ordered the Japanese authorities to pay $91,800 every to 12 Korean girls stored as intercourse slaves for Japan’s troops throughout World Battle II. The ruling, which is the primary of its type in South Korea, is more likely to irritate the already chilly relations between Washington’s two key allies in Asia.
“The court docket acknowledges that the accused dedicated unlawful acts and that the plaintiffs suffered excessive psychological and bodily ache onerous to think about,” Decide Kim Jeong-gon mentioned in his choice.
The ruling is basically symbolic; the Japanese authorities mentioned on Friday that the Korean court docket had no jurisdiction over Japan and that it could “by no means settle for” the order. However the choice may additional complicate Washington’s efforts to convey South Korea and Japan nearer collectively to counter North Korea’s nuclear risk and China’s rising army affect within the area.
Although South Korea and Japan face comparable threats from North Korea, there’s a deep-seated distrust between the 2 nations rooted in Japan’s colonial rule of Korea, from 1910 to 1945. The difficulty of the Japanese Military’s use of Korean and different girls as intercourse slaves is essentially the most emotional historic dispute retaining Seoul and Tokyo aside.
“It is a landmark ruling,” mentioned an advocacy group in Seoul that speaks for the ladies who filed the lawsuits, the Korean Council for Justice and Remembrance for the Problems with Navy Sexual Slavery by Japan.
A ruling on one other case, wherein 11 former intercourse slaves are searching for comparable compensation from Tokyo, is scheduled for Wednesday.
The advocacy group mentioned that the lawsuits had been filed as a part of the ladies’s try and confront the Japanese authorities, which they accused of whitewashing the historical past of wartime sexual slavery by its army.
“The Japanese authorities ought to honor the ruling and pay the compensation instantly,” the group mentioned, including that among the girls had died since submitting the lawsuits.
The plaintiffs within the civil lawsuit selected Friday filed their case with the Seoul Central District Courtroom in 2013. They accused Japan of coercing or luring them into sexual slavery in wartime brothels run for the nation’s troops. Every demanded 100 million gained ($91,800) in compensation. Two of the ladies, Bae Chun-hee and Kim Gun-ja, have since died.
Historians say that tens of hundreds of ladies, lots of them Korean, had been within the frontline brothels from the early Thirties till 1945. It was not till 1991, when a South Korean lady named Kim Hak-soon made the primary public testimony on her painful wartime experiences, that the problem went international. A whole of two40 girls have since come ahead in South Korea, however solely 16 — all of their 80s and 90s — are nonetheless alive.
Tokyo didn’t take part within the trial, refusing to simply accept notices from the South Korean court docket informing it of the authorized problem and asking for a response. The court docket made the notices public on-line and held its first listening to in April of final yr.
Talking with reporters on Friday, Katsunobu Kato, chief cupboard secretary to Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga of Japan, mentioned that the court docket’s choice was “extraordinarily regrettable” and that the Japanese authorities had formally protested to its South Korean counterpart.
“Now we have repeatedly expressed that the Japanese authorities will not be topic to Korean jurisdiction below the precept of exemption from sovereignty below worldwide legislation,” Mr. Kato mentioned.
In its ruling, the court docket mentioned that it couldn’t settle for the immunity declare as a result of the case concerned “anti-humanity acts systematically deliberate and perpetrated by the accused.”
Yoon Ji-hyun, director of Amnesty Worldwide Korea, mentioned that the ruling was important as a result of it was “the primary time a South Korean court docket held the Japanese authorities accountable for the sexual slavery by the Japanese army and opened the way in which to revive justice for the survivors.”
Leif-Eric Easley, a professor of worldwide research at Ewha Womans College in Seoul, mentioned that Tokyo would deem the ruling “an escalation in a sample of weaponizing historical past and breaking worldwide agreements.”
He added, “The financial fallout will likely be tough to gauge through the pandemic, however the diplomatic implication is to complicate the incoming Biden administration’s plans for trilateral cooperation to take care of North Korea and China.”
Relations between South Korea and Japan had already been frosty for years over one other concern from the colonia period: wartime slave labor. In 2018, South Korea’s Supreme Courtroom dominated that Japanese firms should compensate Korean males who had been compelled into labor throughout World Battle II. Japan vehemently denounced the ruling.
Japan accused South Korea of undermining the 1965 treaty that established diplomatic ties between the 2 nations, below which Japan offered South Korea with $500 million in help and low cost loans. Tokyo insisted that each one claims arising from its colonial rule, together with these involving compelled laborers and so-called consolation girls, a euphemism for the intercourse slaves, had been settled by the treaty.
In 2019, Japan imposed export controls on South Korea in a transfer extensively seen as retaliation for the 2018 Supreme Courtroom ruling. The commerce dispute quickly unfold to safety ties, with South Korea threatening to desert an intelligence-sharing settlement with Tokyo that Washington thought of very important to sustaining cooperation among the many three nations.
Seoul didn’t comply with by means of with its risk. However on-and-off makes an attempt by each governments to slender their variations have gone nowhere. The ruling on Friday will most definitely add to the unhealthy blood.
The nations beforehand tried to shut the chapter on World Battle II intercourse slaves, when Seoul and Tokyo introduced in December 2015 what they referred to as a “remaining and irreversible” settlement. Within the deal, Japan expressed accountability and apologized anew to the girls, promising to arrange an $8.3 million fund to assist present old-age care. Washington hailed the deal. However among the girls have since rejected it, saying it did not specify Japan’s “authorized” accountability or to supply official reparations.
President Moon Jae-in additionally denounced the deal on the election marketing campaign path, as his supporters thought of it a part of the “pro-Japanese” legacies of his predecessor, President Park Geun-hye, who was impeached on fees of corruption and abuse of energy and ousted. After Mr. Moon took energy, one of many first issues he did was to successfully nullify the 2015 settlement.
Prosecutors additionally arrested a former chief justice of South Korea’s Supreme Courtroom on fees of illegally conspiring with Ms. Park’s authorities to attempt to delay or manipulate court docket rulings on Koreans searching for redress from Japan for compelled labor and sexual slavery through the colonial period.
Motoko Wealthy contributed reporting from Tokyo.