In what appears to be the first-ever court case of a North Korean company suing South Korean firms at Seoul Central District Court, the DPRK company lost a lawsuit demanding $89,000 from four South Korean companies for an allegedly unpaid zinc shipment worth more than $4.7 million more than a decade ago. 

Although the two North Korean plaintiffs in the case were reportedly absent at the trial on Tuesday, a third plaintiff -- South Korean national Kim Han-shin -- told NK News he had been asked by the DPRK organization in 2019 to represent their legal interests. Kim is the director of the non-profit Inter-Korean Economic Cooperation Research Center (IKECRC) and has been working on inter-Korean economic cooperation projects for two decades.