SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA | South Korea's highest court upheld on Thursday rulings ordering Japanese companies to compensate Korean victims of wartime forced labor, although Seoul had already agreed to foot the bill.
Relations between the two US allies have long been testy due to bitter memories of Japan's brutal occupation of the Korean peninsula from 1910 to 1945.
However, ties have been improving as the conservative government of President Yoon Suk Yeol has sought to bury the historical hatchet and confront growing military threats from North Korea jointly with Japan.
Around 780,000 Koreans were conscripted into forced wartime labour by Japan, according to data from Seoul, not including women forced into sexual slavery by Japanese troops.
South Korea's Supreme Court upheld two lower court rulings, which issued compensation orders against Japan's Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Nippon Steel, dismissing appeals by the companies.
Mitsubishi was ordered to compensate three South Korean victims with amounts ranging from 100 million-150 million won ($76,700-$115,000), while Nippon Steel was ordered to provide 100 million won each to seven victims.
"The decision of the lower court(s) was accepted and the appeal was dismissed," it said in a statement.
Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said Tokyo had lodged a protest over the court's ruling.
"It's extremely regrettable and unacceptable," he told reporters.
However, Hayashi also pointed to an announcement by the government in Seoul in March that any plaintiffs who won such compensation claims would be paid out of a South Korea-backed fund rather than by the Japanese companies.
South Korea's foreign ministry confirmed that was still the case after the latest ruling.
The fund was established by South Korean companies that benefitted from a 1965 treaty and reparations deal that restored diplomatic ties between the two countries.
The March decision has faced significant backlash in South Korea, with critics saying it did not involve a fresh apology and only entailed voluntary contributions from the Japanese companies involved.
Japan has argued that the 1965 treaty, which included a reparation package of about $800 million in grants and cheap loans, extinguished any victims' right to sue.
The Supreme Court in Seoul said it had made clear in a 2018 ruling that the right to seek compensation was not covered by the 1965 treaty.
Thursday's ruling came about a month after another South Korean court ordered the Japanese government to compensate 16 women for forced sexual slavery during World War II, overturning a lower-court ruling that had dismissed the case.
South Korea has recently expanded its military cooperation with both Tokyo and Washington to counter the increasing threat from nuclear-armed North Korea.
