South Korea's Supreme Court dismissed the appeal and upheld the second-instance ruling recognizing the victims' right to damages from Nippon Steel. The lawsuit was filed by the victims' families, who alleged that they had been forced into labor around 1942, and the ruling ordered Nippon Steel to pay total compensation of 80 million won.
On the 12th, the Supreme Court of Korea dismissed the appeal in a damages lawsuit against Nippon Steel and upheld the second-instance ruling. The victims' families filed the lawsuit in April 2019, alleging that the victims had been forced to work for approximately 5 months at the Kamaishi Steel Works in Iwate Prefecture.
The issue was the starting point for the statute of limitations. The Supreme Court of Korea determined that October 2018, when it first finalized a Japanese company's liability for damages, was the starting point, overturning the first-instance ruling and ordering Nippon Steel to pay compensation.
In the developments leading up to this case, the victims were deemed to have faced an objective impediment that had made it effectively impossible to exercise their claims since the case was remanded for further proceedings in 2012. Since then, a series of rulings in subsequent lawsuits have recognized those claims.