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South Korea tells Koizumi to end Tokyo shrine visits

South Korea's president challenged Japan yesterday to live up to its apology for its colonial past by halting repeated visits by Japanese leaders to a controversial shrine that honors war criminals.

Relations between Japan and South Korea have seriously frayed in recent years over several history issues, including Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's repeated visits to the war shrine that critics say glosses over the country's wartime atrocities.

"Japan has already apologized. We do not demand they apologize again," South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun said in a nationally televised address marking Korea's March 1, 1919, uprising against Japanese colonial rule. "We demand that they put their apology into practice. We oppose any act that in effect retracts an apology."

South Korea and China have urged Koizumi to stop visiting Tokyo's Yasukuni shrine, which also honors convicted war criminals, because they view those visits as a sign that Japan hasn't fully repented for its past, despite its leaders' numerous apologies.

"In this regard, it is natural for the Korean people to be concerned whether Japan would justify her history of invasion and colonization and take the path of hegemony once again," Roh said.

Koizumi defends his visits to the shrine, contending that a country's leader has the right to express respect to the nation's war dead, and that his visits to the Yasukuni Shrine merely show his resolve that Japan should never wage war again.

Roh rebuffed Koizumi's argument, saying what a country's leader does should be judged based on whether that is "proper in light of universal conscience and historical experience."

In response, Koizumi said he wants Roh to "closely observe the path Japan has taken over the last 60 years after the war and work closely for the friendly ties between Japan and South Korea."

Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe also urged Roh to carefully look at Japan's commitment to peace and focus on the future, not the past.

"I think further developing a future-oriented relationship between Japan and South Korea will serve the national interest of both countries," he said.

Japan ruled the Korean Peninsula as a colony from 1910 to 1945. During the time, many Koreans were forced into front-line labor or sexual slavery in military-run brothels.

On March 1, 1919, hundreds of thousands of Koreans rose up for independence against Japan.
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