1,004 S.Korean victims sue Japanese firms for wartime forced labor

SEOUL - More than 1,000 South Korean forced labor victims and their bereaved families filed on Tuesday the largest-ever class-action lawsuit against Japanese"war criminal" companies, demanding about 100 billion won (92 million US dollars) in damages.

A total of 1,004 South Korean victims and bereaved families, who were forced to work for Japanese war munitions factories during the devastating war, sued around 60 Japanese firms, including Nippon Steel and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, on Tuesday for unpaid wages and damages for wartime hard labor.

The Asia Victims of the Pacific War Family of the Deceased Association of the Korea filed the damage claim suit with the Seoul Central District Court.

At least 700,000 young Koreans were lured into hard labor by the Japanese companies, which lied that they would be allowed to go to school in return for the work, during the Japanese colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula from 1910 to 1945.

The Japanese"war criminal" enterprises have insisted that the individual damages claim was resolved through the 1965 treaty that normalized diplomatic ties between South Korea and Japan, but the victims said that individual right to claim damages must be treated separately from the inter-governmental agreement.

The damages claim kicked off in December 1995 when some of the victims filed a suit with the Japanese district court in Hiroshima. The suit was dismissed in March 1999, and the appeal was also rejected in January 2005. The highest court of Japan finalized the rejection in November 2007.

The Japanese courts claimed that the statute of limitations had run out, and that the individual claim for damages was resolved through the 1965 treaty between the governments of South Korea and Japan.

The forced labor victims even lost the appeals in their home country, but the South Korean Supreme Court ruled in favor of the victims in May 24, 2012, saying that a line should be drawn between the inter-governmental treaty and the individual damages claim, and that the colonial rule itself was illegal.