SEOUL, - The Supreme Court has ruled that a 14th-century Korean Buddhist statue, stolen from Japan and brought back to Korea in 2012, should be returned to Japan. The decision upholds a lower court's ruling on the matter.
According to a new release by the Yonhap News Agency, the case centers around a 50.5-centimeter-tall Buddhist statue from the Goryeo Dynasty (918-1392). The statue was one of two bronze figures that thieves from Korea had taken from Kannon Temple in Tsushima, Nagasaki Prefecture, in October 2012. Buseok Temple in Seosan filed a lawsuit in 2016, demanding the return of the statue, which is currently stored at the National Research Institute of Cultural Heritage in Daejeon.
In the initial 2017 ruling, a district court decided that Japan appeared to have obtained the statue through "abnormal" means and ordered that it be returned to Buseok Temple. However, an appeals court later overturned this decision, stating that the Japanese temple had held the statue for a sufficient amount of time—60 years—to claim ownership. The appellate court also noted that there was no evidence confirming that today's Buseok Temple was the same as the one from the Goryeo Dynasty, which had created the statue.
The Supreme Court upheld the appellate decision, referencing a Japanese civil code that states anyone who has held another person's object peacefully and publicly for 20 years gains ownership rights. The court concluded that Japanese law should apply in this case because international law stipulates that the law of the location where the object was situated when the second possessor gained ownership should be applied.