Court: Mitsubishi must compensate for forced labor

South Korea's appeals court on Wednesday ordered Mitsubishi Heavy Industries to compensate some laborers forced to work for the Japanese company during World War II.

The high court in Gwangju upheld a lower court's ruling that Mitsubishi should pay damages to four victims and one victim's family for forcibly mobilizing workers under Japanese colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula.

Mitsubishi was ordered to pay 562 million won ($507,000) in damages, reduced from a 680 million won award issued by the lower court.

The victims were forced to work at Mitsubishi's Nagoya aircraft manufacturing plant when they were teenagers in mid-1944.

The workers had previously lost compensation lawsuits in Japan, but the South Korean Supreme Court ruled in May 2012 that they were entitled to private damages claims as the mobilization was "an unlawful act under Japan's forced annexation of Korea".

Yang Keum-deok, 87, and other workers filed a lawsuit against the Japanese company in October 2012 in the district court in Gwangju, which ruled in November 2013 that Mitsubishi should pay damages. The company immediately appealed.

Meanwhile, the local court offered to mediate an agreement with Mitsubishi, considering the advanced age of the victims, but the company rejected the proposal.

Yang said she was in her sixth year at an elementary school when the Japanese principal told her and her classmates that they could earn money while going to a good school in Japan. Instead, they were taken to the Mitsubishi factory to produce Zero fighter jets, Yang told reporters last week.

After surviving harsh labor conditions, Yang returned to South Korea in October 1945, but said she struggled because she was mistaken for having been a "comfort woman" in Japan's military brothels during World War II.

Yang said her husband left her after learning she had worked in Japan and has lived in dire economic conditions since then.