Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said on Tuesday (October 30) that a South Korean court's order to a Japanese firm to compensate wartime forced laborers was "unthinkable," and the ruling overturned the legal basis for bilateral friendship since 1965.
South Korea's top court ruled on Tuesday Japan's Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corp. must compensate four South Koreans for their forced labor during World War Two.
Following the verdict, Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono summoned South Korean ambassador Lee Su-hoon. Kono told Lee that he hopes South Korean government will immediately and resolutely respond to the controversial matter.
Japan and South Korea share a bitter history that includes Japan's 35-year occupation of the Korean peninsula until 1945 and the use of comfort women, Japan's euphemism for girls and women, many of them Korean, forced to work in its wartime brothels. (Reuters)