Nippon Steel Files Immediate Appeal Against Asset Seizure Order by Korean Court

Information board installed in front of the Nippon Steel headquarters located in Chiyoda Ward, Tokyo, Japan
[Image source=Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Seongpil Cho] The Daegu District Court announced on the 7th that Nippon Steel (formerly Shin Nippon Steel), a Japanese company responsible for forced labor during the Japanese colonial period, has filed an immediate appeal against our court's asset seizure order. An immediate appeal is one of the systems to contest a court's decision or order. Just as an appeal in a general lawsuit does not finalize the judgment and gives the appealing party another chance to dispute, an immediate appeal also provides the party with another opportunity to contest. Accordingly, the asset seizure order issued through public notice delivery by our court has not yet become final and binding.

Nippon Steel's immediate appeal is a legal response procedure to prevent the subsequent processes triggered by the seizure order's effect on its assets seized in Korea as of midnight on the 4th. Previously, the Korean Supreme Court ruled on October 30, 2018, in the final appeal trial for damages and other claims filed by four forced labor victims against Nippon Steel, ordering the company to pay 100 million KRW each. When Nippon Steel showed no intention to accept this ruling, the plaintiffs applied to the court in December of the same year to seize shares of PNR, an unlisted joint venture between Nippon Steel and POSCO, to secure the damage claims. The Pohang Branch of the Daegu District Court, which has jurisdiction, decided in January last year to seize 81,075 shares corresponding to the amount of the damage claims, and the plaintiffs also applied for the sale of these assets in May last year.

However, when the Japanese government refused to deliver the asset seizure decision documents from the Korean court to the defendant Nippon Steel, the Pohang Branch initiated the public notice delivery procedure on June 1 of this year, and its effect took place as of midnight on the 4th. According to the Civil Execution Act, an immediate appeal must be filed within one week from the date the judgment is notified, and for Nippon Steel, the deadline was midnight on the 11th. If Nippon Steel had not appealed by then, the seizure order for PNR shares would have been finalized, and the process for liquidation, such as stock value evaluation and sale, could have proceeded.

With Nippon Steel submitting the immediate appeal, our court will re-examine the seizure order for 81,075 PNR shares corresponding to the damage claims decided by the Pohang Branch of the Daegu District Court. The hearing for the immediate appeal case will be conducted at the Daegu District Court, the original court of the Pohang Branch. The presiding panel has not yet been decided. However, it is analyzed that the court is unlikely to accept the appeal. Lawyer Jaesung Lim (Haemaru Law Firm), representing the forced labor victims, said, "Nippon Steel's immediate appeal is not disputing the substance of the claim but raising an objection to the seizure order procedure, and since there is no illegality in the procedure, it is unlikely to be accepted."

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