Kim Han-soo, a victim of forced labor during Japan’s colonial rule, sheds tears during the unveiling ceremony of the Forced Laborers Statue at Yongsan Station Plaza in Seoul on August 12, 2017. / Yonhap News

A Korean court has ruled that 107-year-old Kim Han-soo, a victim of forced labor during Japan’s colonial rule, is entitled to 100 million won in compensation from a Japanese company.

According to the legal community on June 8, the Civil Division 1-1 of the Seoul Central District Court of Appeals (Presiding Judges Lim Eun-ha, Kim Yong-du, and Choi Seong-su) overturned a lower court ruling and ruled in favor of Kim in his damages lawsuit against Mitsubishi Heavy Industries on May 9.

Kim was forcibly mobilized to work at a shipyard operated by Mitsubishi from July 1944 to October 1945, when he was 26 years old. In April 2019, he filed the lawsuit, stating, “As a fellow human being, I was dragged off by the Japanese imperialists and forced to live like less than a dog or a pig.”

In the first trial, held in February 2022, the court ruled against Kim. The court reasoned that the statute of limitations had expired because Kim had filed the suit more than three years after the Supreme Court's ruling of remand after quashing in 2012, which first acknowledged the right of forced labor victims during Japan’s colonial rule to seek compensation. However, the appellate court ruled that the statute of limitations should not be calculated from the Supreme Court's ruling in 2012, but from the Supreme Court's full bench decision in 2018 that finalized the case upon further appeal. The court said, “It was only with the Supreme Court full bench ruling in 2018 that the possibility of judicial remedy for the forced labor victims in Korea was firmly established,” and added, “Considering these circumstances, it is reasonable to view that until the full bench decision was delivered, the plaintiff was effectively prevented from exercising his rights against the defendant.”

The court held that Kim's right to claim damages was recognized because he filed the lawsuit in April 2019, within three years of the full bench decision by the Supreme Court in October 2018.