Victim of forced labor, Lee Chun-sik grandfather. /Courtesy of News1

Grandfather Lee Chun-sik, who was forcibly mobilized to a Japanese steel mill during the Japanese colonial period in his teens, passed away due to illness. He was 105 years old.

On the 27th, the Citizens' Association for Victims of Forced Mobilization during the Japanese Occupation announced that Grandfather Lee Chun-sik had passed away that morning at a nursing hospital in Dong-gu, Gwangju.

Lee, who resided in Gwangju, was born in 1924. In 1941, at the age of 17, he applied to serve in the Defense of the Country in the belief that he could learn technology in Japan.

Lee was assigned to the Kamaishi steel mill of Nippon Steel, where he worked as a laborer for 12 hours a day, transporting steel. He did not receive any wages, let alone learn any skills. He was seriously injured when he fell onto hot steel, leaving large scars that remain to this day.

Lee and others filed a lawsuit in South Korea in 2005, but the courts dismissed their claims in the first and second instances. However, in 2012, the Supreme Court ruled that individual claim rights were not extinguished by the Japan-Korea Claims Agreement and that the statute of limitations had not been completed, ordering a retrial.

The reopened second trial recognized the corporations' liability for damages, following the Supreme Court's ruling; however, Japanese corporations contested the verdict, and the case was refiled with the Supreme Court in August 2013.

After more than five years of delays in the ruling, the Supreme Court confirmed in 2018 that Nippon Steel and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries should compensate 15 victims of forced mobilization with damages and delayed interest.

The Yoon Suk-yeol government announced a 'third-party settlement' plan to have the foundation pay the victims the compensation instead of the Japanese defendant corporations, leading Lee and three others to refuse the payment.

Three months before his passing, on October 30 of last year, Lee accepted the third-party settlement method for compensation from the Foundation for the Support of Victims of Forced Mobilization during the Japanese Occupation.

The funeral parlor was set up in room 201 of VIP Funeral Town in Seo-gu, Gwangju. The funeral will take place at 9:40 a.m. on the 29th.