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S Koreans request removal of names from war shrine

A group of South Koreans filed a lawsuit yesterday against a Tokyo war shrine criticized for glorifying Japan's militaristic past, demanding it remove relatives' names from the list of war dead honored there.

The suit, filed at the Tokyo District Court, is the first ever filed by South Koreans against the Yasukuni shrine, their Japanese supporter Naoyoshi Yamamoto said yesterday.

The 11 plaintiffs -- including a former soldier and 10 others whose fathers were forced into the Japanese military during World War II -- said their names have been enshrined against their will and want them removed.

Four of the plaintiffs visited the shrine earlier yesterday to make the demands directly before filing the suit at the court, but were not allowed to enter a shrine building to meet the priests, Yamamoto said.

In the lawsuit, the plaintiffs are also demanding ¥1 each in compensation and a public apology for enshrining their relatives against their will.

The Yasukuni shrine honors Japan's 2.5 million war dead, including seven executed Class-A war criminals and an estimated 21,000 Koreans.

The shrine has often been a source of friction between Japan and South Korea and China, which suffered Japanese aggression and see the shrine as the symbol of Tokyo's militaristic past.

South Korea, which still harbors bitter memories of Japan's colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula from 1910 to 1945, has strongly protested visits to the shrine by Japanese leaders, including former president Junichiro Koizumi.

Last May, a Japanese court rejected demands by a group of more than 400 South Korean plaintiffs that the Japanese government remove their relatives' names from the shrine, saying the government was not responsible for those enshrined at Yasukuni.

The plaintiffs appealed the case, which is currently pending at a higher court.
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