SEOUL, South Korea – On Friday, a South Korean court ordered Japan to financially compensate 12 South Korean women forced to work as sex slaves for Japanese troops during World War II, the first such ruling expected to rekindle animosity among Asian neighbors.
Japan immediately protested the ruling, claiming that all wartime compensation issues had been resolved under a 1965 treaty that normalized their ties.
The Central District Court in Seoul has ruled that the Japanese government must award $ 91,360 to each of the 12 women who filed lawsuits in 2013 for their war sexual slavery.
The court said Japan’s mobilization of these women as sex slaves was “a crime against humanity.” He said the mobilization took place when Japan “illegally occupied” the Korean Peninsula between 1910 and 1945, so that its sovereign immunity could not protect it from South Korean trials.
The court said the women were victims of “hard sexual activity” by Japanese troops, which caused bodily harm, sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies and left “great mental scars” in women’s lives.
Observers say Japan is unlikely to comply with the South Korean court’s ruling. A support group for Korean women has said it could take legal action to freeze the Japanese government’s assets in South Korea if Japan refuses to compensate women.
Japan’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement that its Deputy Foreign Minister Takeo Akiba had summoned South Korean Ambassador Nam Gwan-pyo to file a protest against the ruling.
The verdict comes as South Korea seeks to repair tense ties with Japan over the history and trade of the war since the departure of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in September, which many South Koreans believe has sought to analyze colonial abuses Japan.
Bilateral disputes erupted following a 2018 ruling by the South Korean Supreme Court calling on Japanese companies to provide reparations to elderly South Korean plaintiffs for their forced war work. The dispute turned into a trade war that saw both countries downgrade each other’s trade status and then expanded on military issues when Seoul threatened to end a 2016 military intelligence-sharing agreement with Tokyo.