Key Points

The civil appeals division of the Seoul Central District Court overturned a lower court's ruling handed down in 2022 that rejected Kim Han-soo's suit seeking compensation from the Japanese company on the grounds that the case's statute of limitations had expired.

In May, the appeals court ordered Mitsubishi Heavy Industries to pay 100 million won ($73,400) in compensation to Kim in a ruling that came about 80 years after he was conscripted into Japan's wartime forced labour.

Despite the court's ruling, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries is not likely to pay the compensation.

Kim said he was forced to work in a shipyard run by the Japanese firm in 1944 during Japan's 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula.

In previous damages suits related to forced labor, courts largely ruled that the statute of limitations expired in May 2015, three years after the Supreme Court acknowledged the legal right to claim damages by Korean victims of Japan's forced labour for the first time, Yonhap news agency reported.

South Korean civil law stipulates that the legal right to claim damages expires three years after the victim discovers the harm and identifies the offender.

But the appeals court ruled in favour of Kim, judging that the statute of limitations related to forced labour-related damages suits should be calculated based on a separate 2018 ruling by the Supreme Court, effectively pushing back the expiration of the statute of limitation. Kim's damages suit against Mitsubishi was filed in 2019.

In 2018, the Supreme Court ordered Japanese firms to compensate Korean victims of Tokyo's forced labour in a landmark ruling. But Japan has claimed all such reparation issues were settled under a 1965 treaty to normalise bilateral relations.

- IANS