SEOUL, South Korea – A court in South Korea on Friday ordered Japan to financially compensate twelve South Korean women who were forced to work as sex slaves for Japanese troops during World War II.
Japan immediately protested the ruling, claiming that all compensation issues during wartime were resolved in a 1965 treaty that normalized their ties.
The Central District Court in Seoul has ruled that the Japanese government should each give $ 91,360 to the twelve women who filed the lawsuit in 2013 for their sexual slavery in the war.
The court said Japan’s mobilization of these women as sexual slaves was a crime against humanity. It said the mobilization took place when Japan “illegally occupied” the Korean Peninsula from 1910-45 so that its sovereign immunity could not protect it from lawsuits in South Korea.
The court said the women were the victims of ‘hard sexual activities’ by Japanese troops, causing bodily harm, venereal diseases and unwanted pregnancies and leaving ‘major mental scars’ in the women’s lives.
Observers say it is unlikely that Japan will comply with the South Korean court ruling. A support group for Korean women said it could take legal action to freeze Japanese government assets in South Korea if Japan refused to compensate the women.
The Japanese Foreign Ministry said in a statement that its Deputy Minister Takeo Akiba had summoned South Korean Ambassador Nam Gwan-pyo to register his protest against the ruling.
The ruling comes as South Korea has been trying to restore strained ties with Japan over war history and trade since the departure of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in September, which many South Koreans say has sought to alleviate Japan’s colonial abuses.
The bilateral disputes flared up after a 2018 ruling by the Supreme Court of South Korea requesting Japanese companies to compensate older South Korean claimants for their forced labor in the war. The dispute escalated into a trade war in which both countries downgraded each other’s trade status, and then transferred to military matters when Seoul threatened to terminate a 2016 military intelligence deal with Tokyo.