SOUTH KOREA’S supreme court ordered a third Japanese company today to compensate wartime employees for forced labour, the second such ruling in a week.

The verdict drew quick rebukes from Japan, but observers say it is unlikely the ruling will cause any major harm to bilateral relations.

The court ruled that shipbuilder Hitachi Zosen Corporation and heavy equipment manufacturer Mitsubishi Heavy Industries must give between 50 and 150 million won (about £30,000-£90,000) in compensation to each of the 17 Korean plaintiffs.

Mitsubishi and Japanese company Nippon Steel had already received supreme court compensation orders, but it was the first such ruling for Hitachi.

Plaintiffs included a surviving victim who suffered a serious burn and the family of a worker who died during an earthquake in Japan in 1944, when they worked for Mitsubishi’s aircraft-making factory in Nagoya.

Others include the relatives of late Mitsubishi workers who were injured during the US atomic bombing of Hiroshima, according to a court press release.

Rulings in favour of the Korean workers were expected after two cases in 2018 where Mitsubishi and Nippon Steel  were ordered to compensate former Korean employees forced to work for Japanese companies during Japan’s 1910-45 colonisation of the Korean peninsula.

On December 21, the top court again ordered Mitsubishi and Nippon to provide compensation to other Koreans for similar colonial-era forced labour.

Hiroyuki Namazu, director-general of the Japanese Foreign Ministry’s Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau, called the latest South Korean ruling “extremely regrettable and absolutely unacceptable.”

He claimed all compensation issues between the two countries were settled when they normalised ties in 1965.