South Korea's Supreme Court on Thursday upheld decisions by lower courts ordering two Japanese firms, Nippon Steel Corp. and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd., to pay damages to South Koreans for forced labor during Japan's colonial rule.
The rulings came as a disappointment to the Japanese government and the companies, but Seoul quickly reassured that plaintiffs would be eligible to receive compensation from a South Korean government-backed foundation rather than the sued firms, aligning with a plan Seoul announced in March for solving the wartime labor issue.
In its first ruling on the issue since November 2018, the top court dismissed appeals by Nippon Steel and Mitsubishi Heavy against the high court decisions on two lawsuits that ordered them to pay a total of 1.17 billion won ($900,000).
Similarly, in late 2018, the Supreme Court upheld orders in separate judgments for Nippon Steel, then named Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corp., and Mitsubishi Heavy to pay damages for wartime labor, prompting South Korea-Japan relations to deteriorate.
Responding to the latest rulings, Japan's top government spokesman, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi, said they are "extremely regrettable and totally unacceptable" and that Tokyo has lodged a protest with Seoul.
Hayashi told a regular news conference that he expects the South Korean government-backed foundation to address the matter.
Nippon Steel and Mitsubishi Heavy both called the court's decisions "extremely regrettable," saying the issues were settled by the 1965 bilateral agreement.
Japan has said all issues stemming from its 1910-1945 colonization of the Korean Peninsula were settled "completely and finally" under a 1965 bilateral agreement.
A South Korean Foreign Ministry spokesperson assured that plaintiffs who won the latest lawsuits will be eligible to receive compensation from the government-backed foundation.
In a bid to improve the strained bilateral ties, Seoul said in March that plaintiffs who had won lawsuits over forced labor would receive compensation from a government-backed foundation rather than the sued firms.
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol said at the time the announcement of the solution to the wartime labor issue "laid the foundation for the two nations to discuss future-oriented development from now on."
The Thursday rulings upheld a decision by the Seoul High Court in June 2019 and one by the Gwangju High Court in December 2018 that ordered Nippon Steel and Mitsubishi Heavy to pay between 100 million won and 150 million won each to former workers.
The seven plaintiffs in the Nippon Steel case have died since the lawsuit was first filed about a decade ago, as have three of the four plaintiffs in the Mitsubishi Heavy case, with a family member of a deceased worker the only survivor. The cases have been taken over by their families.
The three plaintiffs in the Mitsubishi Heavy case, all women, have said they were promised opportunities to study and earn money but were instead put to work at a wartime munitions factory of the company in Nagoya in central Japan during World War II.
The daughter of one of the female workers told reporters Thursday that her mother died in May this year.
"She waited (for the ruling) for a long time and died. I feel sorry for her," the daughter said.
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