Foreign Ministry protests Japanese leader's offering to Yasukuni Shrine

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida offered tribute to the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo on Sunday. [YONHAP]

The Korean Foreign Ministry protested Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s sending of a ritual offering to the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo on Sunday.

“The Korean government expresses deep disappointment and regret that responsible Japanese leaders have once again paid tribute to the Yasukuni Shrine, which glorifies Japan’s past wars of aggression and enshrines war criminals,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lim Soo-suk said in a press release Sunday. “Our government urges Japan’s leaders to face history directly and demonstrate humble and true reflection on the past through action, and once again emphasize that this is an important foundation for the development and future-oriented relations between Korea and Japan.”

On Sunday, Kishida sent a ritual offering to the Yasukuni Shrine, where Class A war criminals of World War II are enshrined. Kishida, who was inaugurated in October 2021, has sent such ritual offerings to the shrine for every spring and autumn festival but has not visited the shrine himself.

Kishida offered a “masakaki,” an object used in Shinto rituals, in his name to celebrate the spring festival that began Sunday at Yasukuni Shrine. The Japanese leader is not expected to visit the shrine in person.

The last time a sitting Japanese prime minister visited Yasukuni Shrine in person was then-prime minister Shinzo Abe in 2013.

Visits to the shrine, located in Tokyo, have been a regular irritation between Japan and its neighbors Korea and China, which Japan invaded in the 20th century. The shrine honors 1,068 war criminals, 14 of whom were Class A war criminals, meaning they were directly involved in plotting the war.

Ties between Korea and Japan, strained for years over historical disputes on forced labor that grew into trade and security spats, have warmed since March last year, when the Korean government proposed a solution to compensate the Korean victims of Japanese wartime forced labor with funds from Korean companies. Tokyo followed up with an invitation to President Yoon Suk Yeol for a summit meeting in Tokyo.

Yoon met with Kishida in Tokyo in March 2023, marking the first visit by a Korean president to Japan for a summit in 12 years. Following the summit, Japan formally ended its export restrictions on Korea, and Korea announced its full return to the military intelligence-sharing pact with Japan. Japan also invited Korea to the Group of 7 summit in Hiroshima last year.

BY LIM JEONG-WON [lim.jeongwon@joongang.co.kr]