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

Thirty American victims of Hezbollah terror attacks have filed civil action in the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., against the government of North Korea. The plaintiffs, injured by Hezbollah rockets fired into northern Israel during the Second Lebanon War in 2006, allege that North Korea aided the militant group by training senior Hezbollah leaders and by providing networks of underground storage bunkers meant to house Katyusha rocket launchers. [Ha’aretz]

This would be the third recent civil suit against North Korea in a U.S. court of which I’m aware. The first, by surviving crew members of the U.S.S. Pueblo and the widow of its captain, won $65 million in damages over North Korea’s horrific torture of those men. The second suit, which is pending now, seeks damages for North Korea’s role in a 1972 terrorist attack at Lod Airport that killed 26 people, most of them religious pilgrims from Puerto Rico. Both suits took advantage of an exception to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act for acts by states that were then listed as state sponsors of terrorism (meaning that Esther Kim should call her lawyer, but Robert Park need not bother).

Having observed, no doubt, that North Korea never defends these suits and inevitably ends up on the wrong side of a default judgment, the plaintiffs have asked for $100 million in compensatory damages, plus an unspecified amount in punitive damages. The suit cites this 2007 memorandum by the Congressional Research Service to support its allegations.

This is not to say that North Korea is completely beyond litigating its claims in foreign courts. In 2008, North Korea reached a 39 million Euro settlement with several insurers that it sued for refusing to pay on claims that the insurers suspected of being fraudulent. Those suspicions were later supported by the detailed account of former North Korean insider (and my friend) Kim Kwang Jin.

Here’s the plaintiffs’ lawyer, speaking about the newest lawsuit:

“Hezbollah’s underground facilities significantly improved their ability to fight the Israelis during the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war,” the memorandum added.

Attorney Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, one of the lawyers representing the plaintiffs, said: “North Korea has become a major player in providing support and material resources to Middle East terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah.” It was North Korea which trained Hezbollah’s leadership and built the underground bunkers that permitted the terrorists to evade Israeli jets during the Second Lebanese War and to continue their rocket attacks targeting civilians,” she added.

Darshan-Leitner added that, “As a facilitator of the Hezbollah rockets, North Korea is financially liable to all those Americans injured by the terrorists. The lawsuit aims to secure a measure of justice for the terror victims and teach North Korea that it cannot continue to support Hezbollah with impunity.”

President Obama decided not to restore North Korea to the list of state sponsors of terrorism on February 3, 2010. President Bush removed North Korea from the list on October 11, 2008 as a reward for its “progress” toward nuclear disarmament. Discuss among yourselves.

Hat tip to a friend.

On a distantly related note, the plaintiffs will have one less source of North Korean assets to attach to satisfy their judgment. Pyongyang Soju has withdrawn from the U.S. market after discriminating drunks said “bleccccch.”