Opposition lawmakers demanded that the head of South Korea's ruling party resign yesterday af-ter he admitted that his father worked for Japanese forces during their 35-year occupation of the Korean Peninsula, but the party leader declined to quit.
The revelation came after President Roh Moo-hyun called for an investigation into Koreans who collaborated with Japan, which ruled from 1910 until its World War II defeat in 1945.
Shin Ki-nam, chairman of the ruling Uri party, confirmed a news report this week that his father worked as a military police officer for the Japanese army. He told MBC radio yesterday that he has no immediate plans to step down, but would consult with party members and get a sense of public opinion.
``We're not at the stage to talk about my plans for my job,'' he said. Earlier Tuesday, the union-supported Democratic Labor Party demanded Shin resign.
The rightist opposition Grand National Party has condemned Roh's plans to investigate collaborators as a political ploy aimed at its chairwoman, Park Geun-hye, whose father was an officer in the Japanese army and was one of the nation's former dictators.
A new online voting system aimed at boosting turnout among the Philippines’ millions of overseas workers ahead of Monday’s mid-term elections has been marked by confusion and fears of disenfranchisement. Thousands of overseas Filipino workers have already cast their ballots in the race dominated by a bitter feud between President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and his impeached vice president, Sara Duterte. While official turnout figures are not yet publicly available, data from the Philippine Commission on Elections (COMELEC) showed that at least 134,000 of the 1.22 million registered overseas voters have signed up for the new online system, which opened on April 13. However,
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