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China News Service, Seoul, August 22 (Reporter Liu Xu) On the 22nd local time, the Seoul Central District Court of South Korea made a second-instance judgment on two lawsuits filed by the relatives of Korean laborers forcibly recruited by Japan during World War II against Japanese companies for compensation. Both cases overturned the first-instance results and ordered the defendant Japanese companies to pay compensation to the plaintiffs.

According to Yonhap News Agency, a Korean laborer named Zheng stated that he was forced to work in an ironworks in Iwate Prefecture, Japan from 1940 to 1942. Based on this, Zheng's family filed a claim against the Japanese company Nippon Steel in April 2019. The first instance court ruled that the plaintiff lost the case on the grounds that the family's right to exercise the right to claim damages had expired. The second instance court overturned the first instance judgment and ordered the defendant Japanese company to pay 100 million won (about 532,000 yuan) in compensation to the plaintiff.

On the same day, the Seoul Central District Court also overturned the first-instance judgment in another damages lawsuit filed by the family of Korean worker Min against Nippon Steel Corporation, and ordered Nippon Steel Corporation to pay the plaintiff 80 million won.

During Japan's colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula from 1910 to 1945, a large number of laborers were forced to work as coolies in Japan. For a long time, the Korean victims and their families have filed lawsuits against Japan for compensation, but the Japanese government and related companies have always refused to pay compensation on the grounds that the claim issue has been "resolved" by the South Korea-Japan Claims Agreement.

In 2018, the Supreme Court of South Korea passed a full-court ruling, clarifying that the South Korea-Japan Claims Agreement signed when South Korea and Japan normalized diplomatic relations in 1965 did not hinder South Korean laborers who were forcibly recruited during World War II from exercising their right to claim individual compensation.

In many subsequent related judgments, the second-instance court held that the starting time for the statute of limitations should not be 2012, but 2018 when the Supreme Court of Korea passed the full court trial judgment. Therefore, the "statute of limitations has expired" was not established, and the first-instance judgment was overturned. (End)