Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Tuesday, August 19, 2003
DPRK Blasts Japanese Officials for Visit to War Shrine
The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) warned Monday it will not tolerate Japan's moves for militarization, including the visit to Yasukuni war shrine.
The official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said in a commentary that the visit to Yasukuni shrine Friday by Japanese high-ranking officials indicates that the "Japanese reactionaries"still seek to realize their ambition for the re-invasion of Asia at any cost by "calling back the departed souls of militarists, oblivious of a lesson taught by history."
The visit to the shrine can not but be a "criminal move to revive militarism," which arouses the doubt of the Asian people about the Japanese politicians' political intention to redeem Japan's aggression of Asia and all other crimes it committed against Korean and other Asian people in the past century, the commentary said.
The continuing visits to the shrine by the "Japanese reactionaries" can not but be a "perfidy" to the DPRK-Japan Declaration signed by top leaders of the two countries, whereby the DPRK and Japan committed themselves to liquidating the unhappy past and establish new good neighborly and friendly relations, it said.
DPRK leader Kim Jong Il and Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi met in Pyongyang last September and signed the historic declaration.
"The Korean people will never tolerate the Japanese reactionaries' criminal act of escalating their moves for militarization and overseas expansion while evading the issue of redeeming Japan's past and laying an ideological and moral foundation for militarization in wanton violation of the spirit of the Pyongyang declaration," the KCNA said.