[Anchor Lead] The first hearing in a lawsuit to hold the Japanese government accountable for Japan's wartime sex slavery was held in Korea. It took three years to hold this trial initiated by the Korean victims of the wartime atrocity, because of Japan's refusal to recognize Korea's judicial right.
[Pkg]
The first hearing of the damage suit for victims of wartime sex slavery was held yesterday in Seoul. The trial began three years after the lawsuit holding the Japanese government accountable for the atrocity was lodged. Three victims - Lee Yong-soo, Kil Won-ok, and Lee Ok-sun - were in the courtroom as plaintiffs. But the defendant, the Japanese government, failed to show up for the hearing. Tokyo's government refuses to attend the trial, citing the principle of sovereign immunity which protects a sovereign state from the jurisdiction of the courts in another state. During the trial, Lee Yong-soo knelt down and sobbed, expressing her frustration while saying that nobody showed up from Japan to hear her demand for an official apology.
[Soundbite] LEE YONG-SU(FORMER WARTIME SEX SLAVE) : "Japan should come to the trial to hear what it had done wrong. Japan is not coming to the trial because it knows its sins."
The representatives of the plaintiffs argued that the logic of international law does not apply in this case as it is a trial to restore the victims' human dignity. The attorneys vowed to have Japanese international law experts as witnesses to prove this point. The Korean court also urged Japan to attend the trial. The Japanese government has been using the strategy of ignoring and delaying since the lawsuit was filed in December 2016. Tokyo even refused to receive the notice of complaint multiple times, claiming that the trial itself infringes on its sovereignty. Japan's absence caused the trial to be postponed five times. The proceeding began only after the Korean court publicly notified the complaint in March. While the trial was on hold, five of the ten pl
0 Comments