S. Koreans Visit Nippon Steel over Damages for Wartime Labor

November 12, 2018

Tokyo--Lawyers of South Korean plaintiffs Monday visited Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corp.'s <5401> head office in Tokyo to demand damages for forced labor in Japan during World War II.

The company, however, refused to meet them. The lawyers plan to send a written request.

The lawyers visited Nippon Steel with photographs of four original plaintiffs, including three now dead, who filed a lawsuit over the wartime labor, calling for talks on ways to compensate them. The lawyers did not make any appointment beforehand.

A security company worker who responded to the lawyers at Nippon Steel headquarters' reception read aloud a memo prepared by the steelmaker, saying that it will examine the course of diplomatic talks between the Japanese and South Korean governments.

One of the lawyers said that they have confirmed the steelmaker's attitude and will consider starting procedures for seizing its assets in South Korea, based on a Supreme Court ruling last month that ordered the company to pay damages.

In the suit filed by the former South Korean workers at a steel plant in Japan during the war, the South Korean top court ordered Nippon Steel to pay 100 million won per plaintiff.

The Korean Peninsula was under Japanese colonial rule until 1945.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a press conference that the government is in close communication with Japanese companies involved in lawsuits over wartime labor.

The government's position is that the wartime labor issue was resolved by a bilateral agreement signed when Japan and South Korea normalized their diplomatic relations in 1965.

Suga said Japan is urging the South Korean government to take appropriate measures immediately and waiting to see its response. Jiji Press