The Supreme Court upheld lower court rulings in favor of a group of Korean victims of Japan's wartime forced labor in a second set of damages suits seeking compensation from two Japanese firms.

The top court on Thursday confirmed appellate court rulings that ordered Japan's Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Nippon Steel to pay a maximum of 150 million won, or around 115-thousand U.S. dollars, to each of the victims as well as damages for the delay for a total of one-point-17 billion won.

Seven of the victims filed the suit against Nippon Steel in 2013 for forcing them to work at the state-run Kamaishi and Yahata steel mills during Japan's colonial rule in the early 1940s, while three other victims and a family member of a late victim sought damages from Mitsubishi Heavy Industries in 2014 for forced labor at the company's Nagoya plant in the mid-1940s.

All of the victims have died over the past decade since filing the suits, after seeing the top court uphold rulings in favor of a previous group of victims against Nippon Steel for the first time one year prior.

The Japanese firms have yet to pay the previously ordered compensation, claiming the statute of limitations has passed, to which the court said on Thursday that the 2018 ruling clearly established that the two countries’ 1965 normalization treaty did not pertain to such damages suits.

Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi expressed Tokyo's strong regret in response, saying the court ruling clearly goes against the 1965 treaty.

Referring to Seoul's announcement in March that compensation will be paid to the victims through domestic corporate donations, Hayashi said Japan expects the plan to be upheld.