SEOUL - South Korea denounced the Japanese finance minister Tuesday for defending Japanese war criminals.

Yoshihiko Noda, widely seen as a front-runner to succeed Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan, said Monday that the Japanese "Class A" war criminals honored at the Yasukuni Shrine are not war criminals. He made similar comments before.

"The remark was an inappropriate one that attempts to deny Japan's history of imperialism," the foreign ministry here said in a statement, adding the minister's view also runs counter to the official position of the Japanese government.

South Korea has long criticized visits by Japanese politicians to the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, seeing it as a sign that Tokyo is not repentant of its imperialist past and wartime atrocities.