COURT REJECTS CLAIM BY COMFORT WOMEN

[Anchor Lead]

A lawsuit filed by a former sexual slave of the Japanese military has been dropped by a Korean court. The latest verdict contradicts with the previous similar lawsuit, which demanded compensation from the Japanese government. The latest ruling says it's not up to local courts to rule on the issue.

[Pkg]

Former "comfort woman" victim Lee Yong-soo and the bereaved families of other victims of Japan's wartime sexual slavery filed a lawsuit against the Japanese government. It was with the local court in 2016 to demand compensation. The trial lasted more than four years. Japan's representatives never once appeared in court.

[Soundbite] Lee Yong-soo(Plaintiff, former ’comfort woman‘(Nov. 2019, first trial)) : "Japan must acknowledge its wrongdoing by appearing in court."

A group of other plaintiffs filed a similar lawsuit, and both cases were tried in court simultaneously. The other group of plaintiffs won the suit back in January. However, the suit filed by Lee Yong-soo in the same court had a different outcome. The judges dismissed the plaintiffs' demand for compensation due to a lack of legal grounds. The judges cited "state immunity" under international law. They said a state is immune from the jurisdiction of a court in a foreign country. The plaintiffs iterated that Japan's wartime atrocities committed on the the enslaved victims constituted acts against humanity, not sovereign acts. This claim was also not accepted by the court. The judges said even if Japan exercised its sovereignty illegally, it was a sovereign act. The ruling states if state immunity is to be excluded, impact on national interests should be weighed in a cold-headed way, and priority is on policy decisions of the legislative and administrative authorities.

[Soundbite] Park Hye-rim(Seoul Central Dist. Court) : "The defendant's acts can be evaluated as sovereign acts. Therefore, demanding compensation for those sovereign acts is not permitted."

The judges added that efforts exerted so far by the Korean government have made little progress in helping the victims recover from their suffering, and that the issue of wartime sexual slavery should be solved through diplomacy.