Recent East Asian Court Cases: Japan, South Korea, Taiwan

Abstract

The baseline East Asian installment of Recent Court Decisions covers Japan, South Korea and Taiwan; non-English sources were read in machine translation and are linked to their originals. Four Korean Supreme Court decisions of 2025 open it: 2024Du44754 requires the remainder to be valued by a partial-valuation method rather than averaged over the parcel; 2024Du44167 permits en-bloc appraisal only of parcels inseparable in use; 2024Du66167 values a true owner's claim at the date of the earlier appraisal; and 2022Da228230 holds that a reconstruction cash settlement must include the expected development gain. Taiwan's Grand Chamber ruling 109 da 1 settles the remedy for contesting expropriation compensation, leaving methodology to a regulation that caps each adjustment. In tax, Japan's 2026 reform outline proposes a five-year rule for rental property, the Tokyo High Court upheld an assessment under the National Tax Agency's circular override, and Korean decisions of 2026 place on the tax authority the burden of proving that prices did not change before a retrospective appraisal. Civil items include the Korean Supreme Court on "markedly high" rent, the Japanese Supreme Court's 28 August 2026 refusal to extend the building purchase demand to a co-ownership share, a Tokyo defect-damages award of about three percent of the claim, and press-reported Taiwanese stigma awards. The Korean compensation machinery and Taiwan's 2026 compensation decisions remain unsurveyed.