South Korea's Supreme Court on Thursday upheld decisions by lower courts ordering Japanese companies Hitachi Zosen Corp. and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. to pay damages to South Koreans for wartime labor.

The top court last week ordered Mitsubishi Heavy and Japan's Nippon Steel Corp. to compensate victims of forced labor during Japan's colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula.

Of the three rulings issued Thursday, the one against Hitachi Zosen was the first by the top court for a wartime labor lawsuit against the engineering corporation.

The rulings were issued amid an improvement in South Korea-Japan relations since Seoul in March announced a plan for resolving the wartime labor issue.

The Thursday rulings upheld a decision by the Seoul High Court in January 2019 ordering Hitachi Zosen to pay damages to former workers, and decisions by the same court in June 2019 and the Gwangju High Court in December 2018 that ordered Mitsubishi Heavy to compensate former workers.

Bilateral ties deteriorated after the top court in late 2018 upheld orders in separate judgements for Nippon Steel, then named Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corp., and Mitsubishi Heavy to pay damages for forced labor during Japan's 1910-1945 colonial rule.

==Kyodo

© Kyodo News International, Inc., source Newswire