Supreme Court: "Statute of Limitations of '3 Years from When Damage Occurred' Applies to Compensation for Korean War 'Ulsan Bodo League' Victims"

[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Hyung-min] The families of victims who learned belatedly that their deceased relatives were victims of the 'Ulsan National Guidance Alliance' incident during the Korean War have been given a path to receive compensation from the state.

The Supreme Court's 3rd Division (Presiding Justice Lee Dong-won) announced on the 9th that it overturned the lower court ruling which had dismissed the compensation lawsuit filed by 42 families of the Ulsan National Guidance Alliance victims against the state on the grounds that the statute of limitations had expired, and remanded the case to the Seoul High Court.

The court ruled that since the Ulsan National Guidance Alliance incident falls under the category of 'mass civilian sacrifice incidents' according to the Past Affairs Settlement Act, the statute of limitations of '5 years from the date of the unlawful act' should not be applied in accordance with the Constitutional Court's decision.

In 2018, the Constitutional Court ruled that applying the statute of limitations under the Civil Act?which states that the statute of limitations begins when the right can be exercised?to the state compensation claims of past incident victims was unconstitutional.

Accordingly, the Supreme Court held that the subjective standard of the statute of limitations under the Civil Act, which is '3 years from the date the victim becomes aware of the damage and the perpetrator,' should be applied to this case.

Furthermore, it added that the 'date the damage occurred and the perpetrator was known' refers not to the date of the truth-finding decision but to the 'date the notification of the truth-finding decision was delivered.'

The Ulsan National Guidance Alliance incident involved soldiers and police officers executing approximately 870 civilians affiliated with the Guidance Alliance en masse in August 1950 at locations such as Daewoonsan in Ulju County.

The Guidance Alliance was an anti-communist organization formed after liberation by gathering people who had engaged in leftist movements but later defected. Due to regional quotas at the time, even those who were not ideological offenders were sometimes forcibly registered in the organization.

In 2007, the Past Affairs Settlement Committee for Truth and Reconciliation confirmed 407 individuals as victims of the Ulsan Guidance Alliance through ex officio investigations. In August 2012, a state compensation ruling for 482 bereaved families was also finalized.

The 42 plaintiffs in the current lawsuit are family members who were unaware of the victim confirmation by the Past Affairs Settlement Committee in 2007 and thus did not claim compensation, or who confirmed execution records through additional information disclosure requests thereafter.

They filed a lawsuit against the state in August 2016 seeking compensation for significant mental suffering caused by this incident.

The first and second trials denied the state's liability for compensation based on the Civil Act, which states that the right to claim damages for the state's unlawful act expires if not exercised within five years from the date of the unlawful act.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.