DPRK slams Koizumi's shrine visit (Reuters) Updated: 2006-08-16 19:36
SEOUL - North Korea on Wednesday called a visit by Japan's prime minister to
a Tokyo war shrine "a grave insult," in its first official reaction to the
pilgrimage that enraged Seoul and Beijing.
Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi on Tuesday paid his respects at
Yasukuni Shrine, where Japanese World War Two leaders convicted as war criminals
along with 2.5 million war dead are enshrined.
Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi(C)
follows a Shinto priest during a visit to the Yasukuni war shrine in Tokyo
on anniversary of Japan's World War II defeat. The United States said
tensions between Japan, China and South Korea would not hurt cooperation
in six-party talks aimed at defusing the crisis over North Korea's nuclear
programs. [AFP]
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South Korea and China consider the visits to Yasukuni as symbolic of Japan's
refusal to come to terms with its history of colonisation and aggression during
World War Two.
"The reality goes to clearly prove that Japan is a cancer-like entity in
preserving regional peace," the North's KCNA news agency said, adding Koizumi's
visits to Yasukuni were "a grave insult and challenge to the peoples of Asian
countries that fell victim to Japan's invasion."
"This is a blatant challenge to the just voices of the peoples of Asia and
the rest of the world and a revelation of the Japanese ruling quarters'
'political will' to restart overseas aggression by stepping up the
militarisation of the country," it said.
The North's official media routinely criticises Japan, which colonised the
Korean peninsula from 1910 to 1945.
Koizumi has said he goes to the shrine to pray for peace.
His pilgrimage was the first by a Japanese prime minister on the August 15
anniversary of Japan's World War Two surrender since Yasuhiro Nakasone went
there on that emotive date in 1985.
On Tuesday, China said Koizumi's shrine visits were "wrecking the political
foundations of China-Japan relations" and summoned Japan's ambassador to
register its protest.
South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon said: "The Japanese prime
minister's visit to the Yasukuni shrine is a total disrespect for the Korean
government and people, particularly on our independence day and the day of the
end (of) World War Two."
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