A local court’s dismissal, Wednesday, of a claim for compensation filed by 20 surviving South Korean victims of sex slavery against the Japanese government will not bring significant changes to the relations between Korea and Japan, but it can offer a starting point to find a middle ground, according to diplomatic experts, Thursday.
They think that the decision by the Seoul Central District Court, which recognized Japan’s “sovereign immunity,” has offered leeway for Seoul to find a diplomatic solution by seeking a domestic consensus on the thorny diplomatic issue.
The Wednesday ruling surprised many people here by contradicting a previous verdict in January on a separate claim by 12 other plaintiffs, in which a different judge at the same district court held Japan accountable for their suffering.
Experts said not to expect dramatic changes in Seoul-Tokyo ties, which have plummeted to the lowest level over a series of historical issues, including the sex slaves and forced laborers exploited by the imperial Japanese military before and during World War II. But the Wednesday ruling has certainly offered room for the Korean government to resolve the thorny issues through diplomacy.
“It came as a surprise that Wednesday’s ruling contradicted an earlier verdict, but in fact, court rulings can be different as each judge has different standards in interpreting the law,” said Yang Ki-ho, a professor at Sungkonghoe University.
“But I think the Korean government’s stance after the January ruling that it recognizes as an official agreement the 2015 deal between Seoul and Tokyo overcompensating the comfort women could have affected the latest court ruling. President Moon Jae-in had said after the earlier ruling that he was puzzled by it.”
Comfort women is a Japanese euphemism used to refer to the women, mostly Korean, who were forced to serve as sex slaves for Japanese soldiers from the early 1930s until the end of World War II.
Yang said the latest court decision has offered another opportunity for the Korean government to resume diplomatic negotiations with the Japanese government, with the ruling recognizing the 2015 deal between the two sides.
“The January ruling saw that the 2015 deal was a political agreement without legal binding force, so it could not restrict an individual’s right to demand compensation. But the latest ruling saw the 2015 deal as still being in effect and that some victims accepted money offered by the now-disbanded Reconciliation and Healing Foundation, established in 2016 by the Japanese government.”
Experts also said it will take several more years for the final legal decision over the dispute to be made by the Supreme Court. They said the Korean government should make diplomatic efforts with the Japanese government in the meantime, but each government should first reach a domestic consensus on how to deal with the matter from a forward-looking perspective.
“The Korean government has said that it will deal with the comfort women issue with a victim-oriented attitude, but it has not been properly communicating with the victims, which was the very reason for the unsuccessful results of the 2015 deal,” Yang said.
After the 2015 deal, many of the surviving victims protested against the South Korean government saying the deal was made against their will, and the Reconciliation and Healing Foundation, established in 2016 by the Japanese government based on the 2015 deal, was disbanded in July 2019.
Park Won-gon, a professor at Ewha Woman’s University’s Department of North Korea Studies, said the Supreme Court’s ruling offers a key moment for Seoul and Tokyo.
“If the Supreme Court does not recognize the compensation claims by the victims, the countries would be able to start from there to restore damaged relations,” Park said. “But the final decision is in the hands of the President when negotiations with the Japanese government are meaningless at this point as the two sides already know each other’s stance on the matter. The President and the ruling party should make a forward-looking decision.”
