SEOUL, South Korea — Lawyers for South Koreans forced into wartime labor have taken legal steps to seize the South Korean assets of a Japanese company they are trying to pressure into following a court ruling to provide them compensation.

Lawyer Lim Jae-sung said Thursday the court in the city of Pohang could decide in two or three weeks whether to accept the request to seize the 2.34 million shares Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corp. holds in its joint venture with South Korean steelmaker POSCO, which are estimated to be worth around $9.7 million.

Lim said Nippon Steel has been refusing to discuss compensation despite a ruling by South Korea’s Supreme Court in October that the company should pay 100 million won ($88,000) each to four plaintiffs who worked at its steel mills during Japan’s colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula. The court made a similar ruling on Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries in November, triggering a diplomatic spat between the countries.