After 18 years of trial,... South Korea's Supreme Court reached a final verdict... on Japan's Mitsubishi Heavy Industries' forced wartime labor on Koreans,... ordering the Japanese firm to compensate the victims.
The court ordered the firm on Thursday to pay around 90-thousand U.S. dollars... to each of the 23 victims and their families... for unpaid work at the Mitsubishi factories back in 1944.
The Supreme Court says a 1965 agreement,... under which Japan paid South Korea 500 million dollars to normalize diplomatic relations,... does not terminate the right of individuals to seek reparations.
In a separate ruling, the court ordered the firm... to also provide compensation for the 4 grandmothers and one of the family members of the deceased.
These women sued Mitsubishi in Japan back in 1999 but lost,... and filed another lawsuit in Korea in 2012.
