The South Korean government must pay 80 million won (US$70,700) to three men who were enslaved on salt farms in remote islands off the country’s southwest coast for several years, a court ruled yesterday.
The Seoul High Court said the government was responsible for their ordeals because local officials and police failed to properly monitor their living and working conditions.
The court said the government should pay 30 million won each to two of the men and 20 million won to the third plaintiff.
More than 60 slaves, most of them with intellectual disabilities, were rescued from the islands following an investigation led by mainland police in 2014.
Dozens of farm owners and job brokers were indicted, but no police or officials were punished, despite allegations some knew about the slavery.
Eight former slaves sued the government last year, seeking a combined 240 million won in damages.
However, the Seoul Central District Court in September last year awarded compensation to only one of them, saying that the government’s responsibility was unclear in the other seven cases.
Three of the plaintiffs who were rejected appealed to the high court.
Lawsuits against the government in human rights cases are rarely successful in South Korea because the burden of proof in non-criminal cases is entirely on the plaintiffs, who often lack information or resources. The plaintiffs’ lawyers had submitted to the high court written testimonies by the islands’ administrative and police officials, who admitted to knowing that the plaintiffs were working against their will although they did not act to protect them.
Most of the salt farm slaves rescued in 2014 had been lured to the islands by job brokers hired by salt farm owners, who would beat them into long hours of backbreaking labor and confine them at their houses for years while providing little or no pay.
The slavery was revealed when two police officers from Seoul came to the island of Sinui disguised as tourists and pulled off a clandestine operation to rescue one of the slaves who had been reported by his family as missing.
One of the Seoul police officers who rescued the man told reporters that they went undercover because of concerns about collaborative ties between the island’s police and salt farm owners.
That man did not appeal after his compensation was rejected last year, according to lawyers.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion