The government on Friday rebutted South Korean President Moon Jae-in's accusation over Tokyo's response to Seoul's top court rulings on wartime labor involving Japanese companies.

"It is extremely regrettable that President Moon tried to shift South Korea's responsibility to Japan," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said at a news conference.

Tokyo and Seoul have been engaged in an intensifying dispute since October, when South Korea's Supreme Court ordered Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corp. to compensate four South Korean nationals for wartime labor, and handed a similar ruling to Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. the following month.