A team of lawyers representing South Korean plaintiffs who won damages from Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. over wartime forced labor visited the manufacturer's office in Tokyo on Friday, again asking for action toward compensating them.
The letter handed over to the company sets a deadline of July 15 for a clear action, or else the lawyers would take additional legal action, it says. The lawyers have already seized the company's assets in South Korea through a South Korean court.
The issue of wartime labor compensation, stemming from Japan's 1910-1945 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula, has strained bilateral ties following South Korean court decisions ordering Japanese companies to compensate groups of plaintiffs who claimed they were forced to work in Japan during World War II.
The South Korean Supreme Court ordered Mitsubishi Heavy in late November to pay damages to groups of Koreans, including former members of the Korean Women's Volunteer Labor Corps, who court rulings found were made to work at a Mitsubishi Heavy factory in Nagoya.
The company has refused to comply with the order, however, as the Japanese government has taken the position that the issue of compensation was settled by a 1965 accord under which Japan provided South Korea with $500 million in "economic cooperation."
A representative of a group in Japan supporting the plaintiffs said Friday after handing the letter to Mitsubishi Heavy that if the company fails to respond by the July 15 deadline, the lawyers plan to take procedural steps toward liquidating the company's assets.
Nippon Steel Corp. is among other Japanese companies facing similar legal action. The top South Korean court in October ordered the firm, then called Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corp., to pay compensation to four South Koreans for forced labor.
Friday's development comes two days after South Korea said it is open to bilateral talks with Japan over the compensation issue if both Japanese and South Korean firms would be involved in a financing scheme, a proposal immediately rejected by Japan.
Japan has called for the start of an arbitration process under the terms of the 1965 bilateral accord, after unsuccessfully seeking bilateral talks with South Korea in a bid to resolve the matter diplomatically.
Related coverage:
Japan rejects S. Korea's offer for wartime labor talks
S. Korea open to wartime labor talks with Japan with provisos
