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

As regards the statute of limitations, the Supreme Court ruled that there had been obstacles to the exercising by the victims of their right to sue before 2000. During the period of 1945-1965, Seoul and Tokyo severed diplomatic relations. The 1965 treaty and many Japanese laws had since blocked the victims from filing damages claim.

The 2012 ruling by the Supreme Court was followed by a series of verdict by lower courts of finding guilty of the Japanese"war criminal"enterprises. The high court in Seoul ordered the Japanese firms, including Nippon Steel, in July 2013 to pay 100 million won per victim in damages, which served as the basis for the 100- billion-won suit filed on Tuesday.

The forced labor victims'association plans to file another damages claim suit in the United States to seize the US assets of the Japanese companies, if it wins the class-action lawsuit in South Korea. In the US, the Kohn, Swift & Graft, which won the 7. 5-billion-dollar damages claim case for the Holocaust victims from the Nazi Germany, will help the South Korean victims sue the Japanese enterprises.

The association also plans to recruit the second, and third, group of plaintiffs to file for additional damages claims for tens of thousands of the forced labor victims who haven't heard of the class-action move.

According to Chang Duk-hwan, the association's secretary general, millions of Koreans were coerced into working for thousands of Japanese firms to produce military supplies during Japan's colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula from 1910 to 1945.

Those victims performed dangerous tasks without being paid, suffering from hard labor, hunger and even beating. Most of the" war criminal"enterprises disappeared after the end of World War II, but some 60 companies are in operation, including Nippon Steel and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.