SEOUL, 7 June, 2021 (TON): On Monday, a Seoul court dismissed a damages suit against 16 Japanese firms.

The suit was filed in 2015 by a total of 84 South Korean victims who were forced into heavy labor without pay during the World War II.

The media reported that the Seoul Central District Court dismissed the suit against the Japanese companies, including Nippon Steel, Nissan Chemical and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.

The court ruled that the individual right to damages cannot be seen as being terminated or waived, but it said the individual right cannot be exercised through lawsuits due to the 1965 South Korea-Japan treaty.

The ruling was in a contrast to the country's top court ruling in October 2018, in which the Supreme Court ordered Nippon Steel to pay 100 million won ($89,900) to each of the four South Korean victims.

However, Japan claimed that all colonial-era issues were settled through the 1965 treaty that normalized diplomatic relations between South Korea and Japan following the Imperial Japan's colonization of the Korean Peninsula from 1910 to 1945.