Seoul: South Korea's Supreme Court on Thursday reaffirmed a lower court's decision, requiring Nippon Steel to pay 100 million won (approximately $67,000) in compensation to South Korean plaintiffs for wartime labor, rejecting the company's appeal.

According to Anadolu Agency, the court rejected the company's appeal, marking the first Supreme Court ruling in a follow-up case since the 2018 decision affirming the right of wartime labor victims to seek damages. The lawsuit, filed in 2019 by the children of Jeong Hyeong-pal, who was forced to work at a Japanese ironworks between 1940 and 1942, argued that his labor was part of Japan's wartime actions during World War II.

Though an initial court dismissed the case due to a statute of limitations, the appellate court recognized that the right to claim damages had not expired. This was based on the 2018 ruling that established Japanese companies must compensate forced labor victims.

In August this year, South Korea seized shares worth 780 million won (nearly $564,000) of two Japanese steel companies, one of them being Nippon Steel. This action was linked to lawsuits over forced labor during Japan's colonial rule, following legal action by South Koreans who claimed they were forced to work for Japanese firms during World War II.