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.

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.

==Kyodo

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