SEOUL: South Korea yesterday shelved a proposed trip by Foreign Minister Yun Byung-Se to Tokyo in protest at visits by Japanese cabinet ministers to a controversial war shrine.
“We express deep concern and regret over the visits... to the shrine that glorifies an invasion that inflicted great loss and suffering on Japan’s neighbours,” the foreign ministry said in a statement.
Japan’s Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso and Keiji Furuya, the chief of the National Public Safety Commission, separately visited the Yasukuni shrine on Sunday.
Internal Affairs Minister Yoshitaka Shindo also visited the shrine at the weekend, his office said yesterday.
The memorial, which honours around 2.5 million war dead — including 14 leading war criminals — is seen by Japan’s Asian neighbours, including China and South Korea, as a symbol of Tokyo’s imperialist past.
Discussions on a visit to Japan later this week by Yun — his first since taking office in March — were called off in protest, a ministry spokeswoman said.
Tokyo said the visits were made in the ministers’ personal capacity and that the government had no official involvement.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe did not make a pilgrimage but paid for equipment made of wood and fabric — which bears his name and title — which is used to decorate an altar.
Ties between Tokyo and Seoul are already strained by a territorial row over a chain of islets.
AFP
