By JIWON SONGSouth Korea’s top court on Thursday ordered a third Japanese company to compensate some of its former wartime Korean employees for forced labor, the second such ruling in a week. Mitsubishi and another Japanese company, Nippon Steel, were previously given a similar compensation order by the South Korean court, but it was the first such ruling for Hitachi. On Dec. 21, the top court again ordered Mitsubishi and Nippon Steel to provide compensation to other Koreans for similar colonial-era forced labor. Japan’s Foreign Ministry responded by summoning a senior South Korean diplomat in Japan to lodge a formal protest. In the meeting, Hiroyuki Namazu, director-general for the Japanese Foreign Ministry’s Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau, called the latest South Korean ruling “extremely regrettable and absolutely unacceptable," according to the Japanese ministry.

Source: The Guardian December 29, 2023 01:39 UTC