Families of S. Korean A-bomb Survivors Due Compensation, Says Japanese Court

The Yomiuri Shimbun

13:26 JST, January 29, 2026

The Hiroshima District Court on Wednesday ordered the Japanese government to compensate 23 relatives of three South Korean nationals who survived the atomic bomb and lived abroad.

After the bombing of Hiroshima in 1945, the three returned to South Korea and were excluded from Japan’s government relief programs.

The plaintiffs sought damages totaling about \3.3 million, including compensation for emotional distress.

The state had sought to apply a 20-year statute of limitations to the damages claim, but the presiding judge ruled that this constituted “an abuse of rights” and was “impermissible.”

In 1974, the government issued a directive stating that “leaving Japan results in the loss of survivor status,” thereby denying atomic bomb survivors who were living abroad allowances for their health and other benefits. This directive was scrapped in March 2003 and was ruled illegal by the Supreme Court in 2007.

The government argued at the trial that the bereaved families filed in June 2023 or later, more than 20 years after the directive was scrapped, and that the statute of limitations applied.

In response, the judge said that the state’s continued assertion that the notice was legal, which lasted until the 2007 Supreme Court ruling, “cast doubt on the right to claim compensation and made it difficult to exercise this right.” Considering that the three atomic bomb survivors and their bereaved families all resided in South Korea, he concluded: “It cannot be said that the right to claim compensation has expired.”