Top court rejects S. Korean ex-forced laborers' compensation demand

TOKYO, Nov. 11 Kyodo - The Supreme Court turned down a demand by a group of South Korean women that
the Japanese government and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. provide
compensation for their forced labor during World War II in Japan.
The plaintiffs' loss in the case became final as the top court's third petty
bench turned down their appeal against a ruling in May last year by the Nagoya
High Court that rejected their compensation demand. The Nagoya District Court
previously rejected it in February 2005.
The seven plaintiffs had sought compensation and an apology from the state and
Mitsubishi Heavy.
The high court upheld the district court dismissal saying the plaintiffs'
individual rights to seek damages had lapsed under a 1965 agreement on wartime
damages claims between Japan and South Korea.
But the high court acknowledged the state's illegality in its involvement in
the practice of forced recruitment.
The female forced laborers involved in the lawsuit arrived in Japan in 1944
when they were aged 13 to 15 and worked at a Mitsubishi Heavy Industries
reconnaissance aircraft factory in Nagoya, according to the court rulings.
To make up for a wartime labor shortage toward the end of World War II, Japan
sought young women who would ''volunteer'' as laborers from the Korean
Peninsula, then under Japanese colonial rule.
==Kyodo