South Korea Court Dismisses ‘Comfort Women’ Lawsuit against Japan

A South Korean court dismissed a compensation lawsuit against the Japanese government brought by a group of 20 women who experienced sexual enslavement under the wartime Japanese military, known as “comfort women,” on April 21. This decision contradicts the same court’s ruling in January, which had favored compensation for these women. The January ruling aggravated South Korea-Japan relations, which were already under strain.

 Seoul’s Central District Court ruled that the Japanese government is not liable for compensation in a South Korean civil case due to sovereign immunity, a principle under international law dictating that a state has immunity from a foreign country’s court jurisdiction. The court cited cases where post-World War II lawsuits filed by several European countries against Germany were dismissed given sovereign immunity. “If [the court] accepts an exception in state immunity, a diplomatic clash is inevitable in the process of the ruling and enforcing it,” Judge Min Seong-cheol said. 

In January, a different judge in the same court did not apply sovereign immunity to a case filed by other plaintiffs, asserting that the concept does not apply to the intentional, systematic, and wide-ranging crimes against humanity committed by the wartime Japanese government. The January lawsuit reached a landmark ruling that ordered the Japanese government to make financial reparations of 100 million Korean Won ($90,000) to each of the 12 plaintiffs. 

However, the new ruling noted that some plaintiffs had already received compensation from a Japanese-financed foundation set up under a 2015 agreement between the two governments. During the Park Geun-hye administration, South Korea made a “final and irreversible” agreement with Japan, under which Japan acknowledged responsibility for its actions, issued an official apology, and provided one billion Japanese yen ($9.3 million) to set up a fund to help the victims. However, some of the victims protested against the agreement, saying that it was made without their consultation. This protest led to the fund’s shutdown, unilaterally decided by the current South Korean President Moon Jae-in in 2019. Although ruling acknowledged the procedural flaws of the 2015 agreement, he suggested that this agreement could provide a groundwork for a solution through diplomatic dialogues.

Victims and human rights activists responded to the current decision with disappointment and criticism. Lee Yong-soo, one of the plaintiffs, called the ruling absurd, saying that she would take the issue to the International Court of Justice. Amnesty International’s East Asia researcher Arnold Fang remarked that the “ruling is a major disappointment that fails to deliver justice to the remaining survivors of this military slavery system and to those who suffered these atrocities before and during World War II but had already passed away, as well as their families.”

Meanwhile, Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato said the ruling was appropriate insofar as it reflects Japan’s position on sovereign immunity. Ha Jong-moon, a professor at the Hanshin University in Seoul, said that the ruling “represents a compromise between Korean people’s sentiments against Japan’s colonial past and international reality.”