Dozens of South Korean activists yesterday clashed with police as they tried to install a statue to former slave workers in front of one of Tokyo’s consulates.
Many South Koreans bitterly resent the Japanese Empire’s brutal 1910 to 1945 colonization of the Korean Peninsula, when millions are known to have been forced into slave work for Japan, and former wartime sex slaves are another hugely emotional issue.
The activists tried to set up a bronze statue of an emaciated man holding a flaming torch in front of the Japanese consulate in the southern city of Busan to commemorate the forced labor victims.
The 2016 installation at the site of a statue of a girl symbolizing women forced into sexual slavery for Japanese troops drew angry protests from Tokyo, which for a time withdrew its ambassador.
“The worker’s statue next to the girl statue. Move over,” activists chanted during an overnight standoff with hundreds of police.
Dozens of campaigners tried to force their way through police lines in front of the Japanese mission, before the protest was broken up.
“We stopped them because they tried to make their way into the area within 100m from the consulate office where any public protest is banned,” the Yonhap news agency quoted a police official as saying.
Several protesters were wounded, it added.
The worker statue would be the first of its kind.
Many slave workers are believed to have perished while working at factories of Japanese firms, including Mitsubishi, with some survivors seeking damages in court in South Korea or Japan.
South Korea and Japan are both democracies, market economies and US allies that face North Korea’s nuclear threats and China’s growing economic might, but ties between them are marred by historical issues.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese