An elderly victim of Japan's wartime forced labor has died at the age of 91.

A council seeking compensation for victims of the Pacific War said on Monday that Choi Hee-soon, who had been forced to work for a Japanese munitions company during Japan's colonial rule of Korea, passed away the day before.

Choi and 12 other victims were waiting for a ruling by the Supreme Court on a damages suit, after a Seoul High Court had ruled in their favor in January of 2019. With her death, the number of surviving victims now stands at seven. 

Choi had testified she was advised by her principal in 1944 that she could study and make money if she goes to Japan. Then a sixth grader, she was taken to a factory owned by Nachi-Fujikoshi.

She was reportedly one of some 16-hundred Koreans, many of them fresh grads of elementary schools, conscripted into hard labor by the Japanese machinery firm during the Pacific War. 

She and others had filed a damages suit against Fujikoshi with a Japanese local court in Toyama in 2003, but the court ruled against the victims, citing a 1965 treaty between South Korea and Japan. The Japanese top court also ruled against them in 2011.