Should Nippon Steel, Mitsubishi pay?
By Semoon Chang The answer is definitely yes, but not through the Korean legal system. On Nov. 1, 2013, a court in the southwestern city of Gwangju, Korea, ruled in favor of four Korean women who were forced to work for Mitsubishi Heavy Industries of Japan during World War II. The court awarded them 150 million won, or about $150,000, per person. Earlier in July 2013, Seoul and Busan’s high courts also ordered Nippon Steel Corporation to pay compensation demanded by its victims of forced labor. These cases are still in progress.The root of the problem with any attempt to resolve the forced labor issue is the 1951 Treaty of Peace with Japan and the 1965 Korea-Japan Agreement that made it almost, if not totally, impossible for individual Korean victims of Japan’s wartime atrocities to recover any monetary damages that they may have suffered. I will stay away from the legal issue that is not likely to find an agreement between Korean plaintiffs and Japanese defendants anytime soon, if ever. Instead, I would like to look at the economic consequences of such courtroom con