Women protest Japan's war crimes
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January 08, 2021This is the first court case involving girls being sexually enslaved by Japanese occupation troops who were euphemistically labeled "comfort women".
Tokyo and Seoul are both great allies of the United States, but their relations are strained due to Japanese colonial rule in the early 20th century and further worsened in the years of the center-left South Korean rule led by Moon Jae-in.
Historians believe that up to 200,000 women, mostly Koreans but also from other parts of Asia, including China, were forced to work as prostitutes for the Japanese military during World War II.
The sentence comes after a trial that lasted eight years ago.
Some of the original plaintiffs have since died and have been replaced by
their respective families.
Tokyo, in recent years, has boycotted the proceedings and claims that all the compensation issues arising from its colonial rule have been resolved with the 1965 Treaty which normalizes diplomatic relations with neighboring countries.
The Japanese government also denies that it was directly responsible for the war abuses, insisting that the victims were recruited by civilians and that the military brothels were privately run.
The dispute escalated despite Seoul and Tokyo reaching an agreement in 2015 aimed at resolving the issue "definitively and irreversibly" with Japanese apologies and the creation of a billion yen fund for survivors.
But Moon's South Korean government declared the agreement reached under its conservative predecessor defective and effectively canceled it, citing the lack of consent from the victims.
The move led to a bitter diplomatic dispute that ended up affecting trade and security ties between the two countries.
The same Seoul court will rule next week on a similar lawsuit filed against Tokyo by 20 other women and their families.