An attorney from Japan who represented Japanese military comfort women victims and won the first trial in the so-called 'Gwanbu Trial' will appear as a witness in the appeal trial of a damages claim lawsuit held in a domestic court this May.
The Civil Division 33 of the Seoul High Court (Presiding Judges Gu Hoe-geun, Hwang Seong-mi, Heo Ik-su) held a hearing on the 16th for the appeal trial of a damages lawsuit filed by a total of 17 victims and bereaved families, including Grandmother Lee Yong-soo and the late Grandmothers Kwak Ye-nam and Kim Bok-dong, against the Japanese government.
The court accepted attorney Yamamoto Seita as a witness for the plaintiff side and scheduled his examination for May 11.
Attorney Yamamoto has been active in Japan for over 30 years regarding the Japanese military comfort women issue. The plaintiff side plans to hear from Attorney Yamamoto about Japan's sovereign immunity (state immunity) law. This is intended to counter the first trial court's dismissal of the victims' claims by recognizing state immunity, an international law principle that a sovereign state cannot be sued in another country's court.
Attorney Yamamoto represented victims in the 1992 Gwanbu Trial, in which 10 victims of comfort women and female labor corps demanded apology and compensation from the Japanese government. The trial is called the Gwanbu Trial because it was held between Shimonoseki, Japan, and Busan, Korea. The Shimonoseki District Court, which presided over the first trial of this lawsuit, ruled partially in favor of the plaintiffs in 1998 and ordered the Japanese government to pay each victim 300,000 yen. This was the first and only ruling by the Japanese judiciary recognizing the Japanese government's responsibility for comfort women. It was also depicted in the film 'Herstory.' However, the ruling was overturned in the 2001 appeal trial with a loss for the plaintiffs, and the loss was finally confirmed by the Supreme Court in 2003.
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