The Supreme Court upheld Tuesday the life imprisonment handed down on a Vietnamese fisherman convicted of killing two South Koreans aboard a vessel in the Indian Ocean in June 2016, after he appealed a lower court decision.

Prosecutors have indicted the man and his Vietnamese accomplice, both aged 32, on suspicion of assaulting and stabbing to death the 43-year-old captain and the 42-year-old engineer of the deep-sea fishing vessel Kwang Hyun 803 in waters near the Seychelles.

The top court also turned down an appeal filed by the accomplice, who was convicted of assaulting the two South Koreans, and upheld a high court ruling that sentenced him to one year in prison.

The two Vietnamese men, who are cousins, previously appealed their respective sentences, handed down by the Busan District Court in January, but the Busan High Court upheld the decisions in June.

They committed the crimes after one of them had a quarrel with the boat's captain. The two Vietnamese men had said they killed the victims because they were worried that they would be ordered off the fishing vessel due to the fight. (Yonhap)