Chief Justice Kim Meong-su (C) rules Tuesday on damage claims filed by four victims of Japan's forced labor during World War II. Photo by Yonhap

Lee Chun-shik (in wheelchair), a victim of Japan's forced labor, holds a news conference Tuesday on his way to the Supreme Court in Seoul. Photo by Yonhap

SEOUL, Oct. 30 (UPI) -- A Seoul court on Tuesday ordered a Japanese steel company to pay more than $87,000 (100 million won) to four South Koreans for forced labor and unpaid wages during World War II.

The Seoul Supreme Court ruled that Nippon Steel and Sumitomo Metal Corp. should pay each of the four plaintiffs, who were forced to work at a Japanese steel factory from 1941 to 1943 during the 1940-45 Japanese colonial rule of Korea.


The ruling concludes a long-running lawsuit filed by the four against the Japanese steel company in 2005. Only one of them, 94-year-old Lee Chun-shik, survived to see the court's decision.

"We were four, but now I'm alone. I feel sad to see the trial today. All four of us had hardships and I feel sad not having them here today," Lee said at a press conference in Seoul.

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Lee said he endured hard labor, unpaid, at a Japanese steel mill in the city of Kamaishi for about 2 1/2 years. The factory was one of Japan's Meiji Industrial Revolution sites, listed in UNESCO's World Heritage places, according to Lee's legal representatives.

The ruling Tuesday overturned a Japanese court's decision on the same case in 2003.

In 1997, two other South Korean citizens filed a lawsuit against the NSSM for forced labor, but Japan's highest court ruled the company didn't have to compensate them on the grounds that the Japanese colonial rule wasn't illegal.

"Today's ruling holds the Japanese company responsible for its acts during the war for the first time," said Cho Si-hyun, researcher at a Seoul-based think tank, Center for Historical Truth and Justice.

The South Korean court rejected NSSM's claim that a 1965 treaty between Japan and South Korea had settled any compensation issues.

"The court saw that any anti-humanitarian, illegal acts made during the war were not part of the treaty. It sets a milestone for other compensation lawsuits filed by Koreans against Japanese entities," said the plaintiffs' attorney Kim Sae-eun.

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The ruling could exacerbate a diplomatic row between South Korea and Japan over historical issues related to the Japanese colonial rule, including wartime slavery and forced labor.

The Japanese government called a South Korean ambassador to Tokyo on Tuesday to protest the ruling.

"Today's South Korean Supreme Court ruling violates the Korea-Japan treaty that already settled any rights issues. This shakes the fundamentals of the bilateral relations built since the normalization of the bilateral diplomatic relations in 1965," Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono told South Korean Ambassador Lee Su-hoon on Tuesday, Yonhap News reported.

Kono also said Tokyo will seek "various options, including international trials."

A Japanese advocate said a lot of people criticized the Seoul court ruling.

"I heard that there have been a lot of online comments that denounce the Seoul's court decision. But if you think of a life of a forced laborer and the time he lost, they shouldn't," Nakata Mitsunobu, who helped two South Korean citizens in their lawsuits in Japan, said at a press conference in Seoul.

"I think the court decision will lead to recovering rights of many other victims under the Japanese colonial rule of Korea," activist Ueda Keisi said. "South Korea and Japan should create a new relationship based on the restoration of their rights."