It seems to me this diplomatic complaint is only going to feed the perception of this guy being a martyr for bombing the Yasukuni Shrine which will only encourage other people looking for attention to do the same thing:
The Foreign Ministry said Thursday it has lodged a strong complaint with Japan over Japanese media outlets’ reports that made public the identity of a South Korean man allegedly involved in a small explosion at a restroom at a war shrine in Tokyo.
“Through a diplomatic channel, the government filed a complaint with Tokyo earlier in the day over Japanese media’s coverage of the incident, as they revealed his identity, photo and name,” ministry spokesman Cho June-hyuck told reporters.
Japanese media reported that police arrested the 27-year-old man, identified only by his surname Chon, on Wednesday in connection with the explosion in a public restroom at the Yasukuni Shrine last month that caused no major damage.
He was arrested shortly after voluntarily returning to Tokyo by plane on Wednesday. [Yonhap]
If this guy did cause the explosion at the Yasukuni Shrine, maybe he voluntarily went back to Japan to be arrested to become some sort of martyr in the eyes of the Korean public?:
In this Monday, Nov. 23, 2015 file photo, a police officer stands guard Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo following an explosion in its public restroom. Police in Tokyo have arrested a South Korean man suspected of causing an explosion last month at the controversial shrine in Tokyo that honors Japanese war dead. The 27-year-old Jeon Chang-han was arrested Wednesday, Dec. 9 after he returned to Tokyo from South Korea for voluntary questioning, police officials said. KOJI SASAHARA/AP PHOTO, FILE
Police in Tokyo have arrested a South Korean man suspected of causing an explosion last month in a public restroom at a controversial shrine in Tokyo that honors Japanese war dead.
The 27-year-old Jeon Chang-han was arrested Wednesday after he returned to Tokyo from South Korea for voluntary questioning, police officials said.
No one was injured in the Nov. 23 explosion at the Yasukuni shrine. Police earlier said the suspect was identified from close-circuit TV and had left Japan after the blast. [Stars & Stripes]
It will be interesting to see if the ROK will turn over this suspect if the Japanese government requests his extradition:
A Korean suspect was caught on surveillance cameras before an explosion outside a public restroom at Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine on Nov. 23, Japanese media reported Thursday.
The shrine houses the remains of Japan’s war dead, including convicted World War II criminals.
Reports said the suspect was dressed in black and wore a backpack. He was spotted walking around the shrine around 30 minutes before the blast and then returned to his nearby hotel.
Police analyzed CCTV footage to trace the suspect’s movements.
The suspect left Japan and returned to Korea late last month, according to Japanese police. Debris from the blast, including pieces of a battery made in Korea. The suspect is in his 30s. [Chosun Ilbo]
It has been pretty quiet on the whaling front for a while, but things could change as Japan announces that whaling will restart this year. This news should make Animal Planet happy since they can have another season of Whale Wars:
Japan will resume “research” whaling in the Antarctic by the end of March next year, local media reported Saturday, despite a call by global regulators for more evidence that the expeditions have a scientific purpose.
The move came after a one-season suspension of its hunting in the ocean as the United Nations’ top legal body judged last year that Japan’s whaling there was a fig leaf for a commercial hunt.
Japan’s fisheries agency has since told the International Whaling Commission that it would resume whaling in the Antarctic Ocean by cutting annual minke whale catches by two-thirds to 333 this season.
But the IWC’s scientific committee said in June that Japan had failed to give enough detail to explain why it wanted to kill almost 4,000 minke whales in the Antarctic over the next 12 years.
Japan’s agency decided on Friday however to go ahead with the plan, claiming that it was scientifically adequate and no change was needed, Kyodo News said.
The Yomiuri Shimbun and other media said Japanese whalers were expected to depart for the ocean possibly by the end of December. [Korea Herald]
This will be a significant development in ROK and Japanese relations if this intelligence sharing agreement does become operationalized:
The United States has been implementing a trilateral military intelligence sharing agreement with South Korea and Japan, the Pentagon said Tuesday.
The memorandum of understanding, which was signed in December last year, calls for voluntary sharing of military secrets on North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs.
The agreement was put into action earlier this year, but questions have arisen after Assistant Secretary of Defense David Shear said earlier this month that the U.S. hopes to “operationalize” the agreement.
“We are implementing the arrangement,” Cmdr. Bill Urban, a U.S. Defense Department spokesman, said in response to a question from Yonhap News Agency. The official declined to provide further details, including how many times information sharing has taken place. [Yonhap]
If true, this demand to remove the comfort woman statue in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul causes me to wonder how sincere Prime Minister Abe is about settling the matter with the ROK. It would be political suicide for anyone in the ROK government to move the statue without first the Korean public feeling the issue has been settled, not before:
President Park Geun-hye (right, back row) talks with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (left, back row) as they stand for a photo session at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Manila, the Philippines, Thursday. (Yonhap)
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has demanded the removal of a statue of a teenage Korean girl, a symbol of Korean victims of Japan’s wartime sexual slavery, as a condition for settling the issue involving the victims, according to a news report Thursday.
Citing a Tokyo official, the Japanese daily Asahi Shimbun reported that Abe made the demand during his first-ever bilateral summit with South Korean President Park Geun-hye at Cheong Wa Dae on Nov. 2.
Seoul’s Foreign Ministry said the report was “different from the truth.”
“We would like to refrain from divulging the content of the summit,” ministry spokesperson Cho June-hyuck told reporters. “We express regrets over the fact that there have been reports from Japan that are not true or distorted.”
According to the report, Abe called for the removal of the statue in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul and reiterated that the issue of the Korean victims — euphemistically called comfort women — has already been settled through the 1965 treaty that normalized bilateral ties.
The report also said that Tokyo is considering establishing a follow-up to the botched Asian Women’s Fund that Japan set up in 1995 for Asian victims, many of whom were Korean. It has also considered sending a letter from the prime minister to each of the victims, the report said. [Korea Herald]
If it makes anyone feel better according to this poll nearly 78% of Japanese hate China as well:
Nearly 60 percent of Japanese people said they hate Korea in a survey conducted last year and released Sunday by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The national image of Korea is the worst in Japan among 14 other countries where citizens were interviewed as part of a survey conducted by Samjong KPMG and commissioned by the ministry.
It showed that only 14.3 percent of Japanese respondents hold positive views about Korea, the lowest among 14 countries.
It surveyed 5,600 people in 14 countries about Korea’s image between October and November 2014.
The 14 countries were Malaysia, China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Russia, the United States, Romania, Britain, Spain, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Japan.
The accounting and financial advisory firm attributed Korea’s negative image in Japan to the ongoing historical and territorial disputes.
“The results suggest that persistent rows over historical issues and the relevant anti-Korea campaigns by rightwing activists affected popular sentiment in Japan,” a company official said. [The Korea Times]
I have to agree that even though the Park-Abe summit did not lead to any breakthroughs, just the fact they met was significant considering all the bickering the past few years. Hopefully this will lead to better future cooperation as long as Prime Minister Abe can keep his political team in check in regards to making controversial comments that inflame tensions with Seoul:
South Korean President Park Geun-hye (R) and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe shake hands prior to their summit talks at the presidential office Cheong Wa Dae in Seoul on Nov. 2, 2015. (Yonhap)
Experts on South Korea-Japan ties welcomed the results of Monday’s summit between President Park Geun-hye and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, saying the meeting paved the way for better bilateral relations even without producing concrete outcomes.
Park and Abe held their first bilateral talks in Seoul on the sidelines of a trilateral summit with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang. The format was intended to keep the first South Korea-Japan summit in three and a half years as low-key and practical as possible amid disputes over shared history.
A major stumbling block in the two countries’ relations has been the issue of Korean women who were forced into sexual slavery for Japanese troops during World War II. South Korea demands Japan offer a sincere apology and compensation to the victims before they all die, while Tokyo insists all issues related to its 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula were settled under the normalization treaty of 1965. [Yonhap]
