South Korea's Supreme Court Orders Japanese Firms to Compensate Wartime Forced Laborers

Mitsubishi and Nippon Steel to Pay Compensation, Despite Japan's Assertion of a Settled Issue Under a 1965 Treaty

South Korea's Supreme Court has ordered Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Nippon Steel Corp. to compensate more wartime Korean workers for forced labor during Japan’s 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula.
The court ruled that Mitsubishi must provide between 100 million and 150 million won ($76,700 and $115,000) in compensation to each of four plaintiffs, and Nippon Steel Corp. must give 100 million won (about $76,700) to each of seven Korean plaintiffs.
This ruling follows contentious 2018 verdicts that irked Japan, which has insisted all compensation issues were already settled by a 1965 bilateral treaty that normalized their diplomatic relations.
The strained ties between the two countries, resulting from the 2018 rulings, began thawing after South Korea’s current conservative president, Yoon Suk Yeol, announced that his country would use a local corporate fund to compensate the forced labor victims without demanding Japanese contributions.
Eleven of the 15 former forced laborers or their families involved in the 2018 rulings had accepted compensation under Seoul’s third-party reimbursement plan, but the remaining four still refuse to accept it.