Holiday Protestors Outnumber Celebrants

Protests, fueled by anti-Japanese sentiment, were held alongside commemorative festivities on Wednesday, the 56th anniversary of Korea's liberation from Japanese colonial rule.

A riverside park in Yeouido, Seoul, was the focal point of two separate Liberation Day celebrations. The "2001 Grand Unification Rally" brought over 10,000 people to the park while thousands more joined a later rally sponsored by the Korean Council for Reconciliation and Cooperation and the National Alliance for Unification.

The second rally was attended by Suh Young-hoon, chairman of the South Korean National Red Cross, and Kim Chul, a leader of Chongyodo, an indigenous Korean religion.

More than 8,000 members of a radical student group, the Confederation of Korean Student Unions, also participated. Organizers said they wanted to show their support for the joint declaration signed by the leaders of South and North Korea last year.

The Christian Council of Churches, which held an exhibition at nearby Yeouido Park of photos of Koreans forced during Japan's colonization of the peninsula to work in labor camps or serve in the Japanese military during World War II.

The council also circulated a petition calling on Japan to return the remains of Koreans who died in the camps or in the war.

Six hundred protesters from the Korean Council for Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery and eight other civic groups rallied at Tapgol Park in Jongno, downtown Seoul. They expressed anger over Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi of Japan visiting the Yasukuni Shrine, a Shinto memorial to Japan's war dead.

"I cannot suppress my rage over Koizumi's visit to the war shrine when he should be offering an apology," said Jung Ho-sun, an 82-year-old former comfort woman. "It is time for our youth to act."

About 200 students and teachers from Seoul Arts High School rallied at the school's athletic field demanding that Japan amend distortions in controversial middle school history textbooks. They then marched to Seoul National University subway station.

Some 500 members of the National Assembly's morning prayer group, led by Representative Kim Young-jin, began a fast to protest Japan's approval of the history textbooks and Mr. Koizumi's visit to the Yasukuni Shrine.

Despite the outrage in Seoul, officials at the shrine, which last year saw 55,000 visitors on August 15, said they expect about 100,000 people to visit this year. Nine Japanese cabinet ministers were reportedly among those visitors.

Placards with slogans like "Don't Cave In to Korea and China!" were carried by some visitors to the shrine on Wednesday, which for the Japanese commemorated their defeat in World War II.

by Cho Min-geun