Another Lawsuit Against North Korea in a U.S. Court

Previously, I’ve posted about the lawsuit in a U.S. federal court by the crew of the U.S.S. Pueblo — heroes in my book, who resisted and humiliated their captors despite unendurable torture — and about the efforts of the plaintiffs’ lawyers to find and recover North Korean assets to satisfy the judgment. The plaintiffs took advantage of a 2001 amendment to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (see subsection (a)(7)) that allows the victims of “torture, extrajudicial killing, aircraft sabotage, hostage taking, or the provision of material support or resources” for terrorism to sue the states responsible for those acts.

There are important qualifications to the exception — the act must have been committed by an official of the state acting within the scope of official duty, and the state must have been either designated as a state sponsor of terrorism at the time of the act, or subsequently designated as such because of that act. The list was first inaugurated with the passage of the Export Administration Act of 1979; however, according to this Congressional Research Service Report,

The U.S. State Department had cited North Korea’s harboring of Japanese Red Army terrorists as a reason for North Korea’s inclusion on the U.S. list of terrorism supporting states. A State Department official stated on April 25, 2000, that the United States considers “resolving this issue as an important step in addressing [U.S.] concerns about North Korean support of terrorism. [Page 4]

Enter the families of those killed in a 1972 terrorist attack at Lod Airport, Israel, a joint operation by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the North Korean-sponsored Japanese Red Army. They have sued the North Korean government for its role in sponsoring and financing the attack, which killed 26 people, most of them Catholic pilgrims from Puerto Rico. The families’ organization calls itself Shurat HaDin:

“North Korea was behind the attack,” Shurat HaDin said. “As the trial will show incontrovertibly, in the months leading up to the massacre the leaders of the JRA and PFLP met each other and with North Korean officials, who provided funding, intelligence, training, and other material support for the terrorists.”

The trial was scheduled to begin on Dec. 3 in the U.S. federal district court in San Juan. The plaintiffs have argued that North Korea supported JRA’s plan to target Israel as part of its campaign to promote communist revolution. [World Tribune]

The plaintiffs filed in the District of Puerto Rico, which falls within the appellate jurisdiction of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, should things get that far. They probably won’t. When the Pueblo plaintiffs sued in the District of the District of Columbia, the North Koreans didn’t contest the suit and lost $65 million by default judgment, more than twice what the North Koreans had won (through an out-of-court settlement) in their litigation against Allianz and Lloyds of London over suspicious insurance claims in British courts.

As always, the real issue will be where to collect the funds. Generally speaking, however, South Korea recognizes and enforces U.S. court judgments, and we all know that plenty of money flows back to North Korea to pay tribute to Kim Jong Il wages for workers at the Kaesong Industrial Complex. As of September 2006, Kaesong’s banking arrangements were with the Woori Bank, via an account held by the Kaesong Industrial District Management Committee (KIDMC). Under the contractual arrangements by which KIDMC was established, it is actually considered a North Korean entity. Thus, KIDMC’s bank accounts — filled by South Korean investors and drained by the government of North Korea — would seem to be fair game for satisfaction of judgments of this kind. Incidentally, Woori Bank also has branches in the United States, meaning that the attachment of correspondent U.S. accounts could be an easier alternative than seeking to enforce the judgments in Korean courts.

The Examiner article linked above, by the way, incorrectly states that North Korea is listed as a state sponsor of terrorism. In fact, President Bush removed North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism on October 11, 2008 to reward North Korea for its splendid progress at dismantling its nuclear arsenal.