Lee Chang Sok, a South Korean resident of Japan who served in the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II and sued for payment of a war pension, died at a Kyoto hospital Friday morning, his family said. He was 75.
Sok, whose suit has been brought before the Supreme Court, was born near Seoul and had lived in Kyoto for the past 48 years.
His funeral is scheduled for Monday in Kyoto. His son, Masayoshi Kobayashi, will serve as the chief mourner, the family said.
Sok was drafted into the Imperial Japanese Army in 1944 as a Japanese citizen because the Korean Peninsula was then under Japanese colonial rule.
After being interned in Siberia by the Soviet military in the closing days of the war, he settled in Kyoto in 1953 but was refused a war pension because he lost his Japanese citizenship under the terms of the 1952 San Francisco Peace Treaty.
He was also ineligible for a pension under Japanese law. , which limited recipients of a state pension to those who hold Japanese citizenship. In November 1992, Sok filed a damages suit against the Japanese government, claiming it is unconstitutional for the government to deny him a pension. It was the first suit seeking state compensation to be filed by a citizen of a former Japanese colony.
Both the Kyoto District Court and the Osaka High Court rejected his suit in 1998 and 2000. He had appealed the lower court ruling to the Supreme Court.