South Korean victims protest Japan's wartime shrine verdict

By Berk Kutay Gokmen

ISTANBUL (AA) - South Korean plaintiffs protested on Friday after Japan's Supreme Court rejected their bid to have their family members’ names removed from a controversial shrine honoring war criminals.

The court’s final decision, delivered on Friday, dismissed the 2013 request made by 27 family members to have the names of their relatives removed from Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine.

The shrine also honors about 20,000 Koreans who died during World War II after being forcibly conscripted to fight within the Japanese army when Korea was colonized by Japan.

According to the Yonhap news agency, the families of the victims were unaware of, and did not consent to, the enshrinement of the fallen Koreans, only learning of it in the late 1990s.

After discovering the enshrinement in the 2000s, their relatives filed lawsuits seeking the removal of the victims' names from the shrine.

However, the court rejected the request, citing the expiry of the 20-year limitation period for such cases.

Since the enshrinement of the Korean victims took place in 1959, the families would have needed to submit their request by 1979 for it to be approved.

Japan only disclosed the enshrinement to the South Korean government in the late 1990s and 2000s, making it impossible for the families to address the issue earlier.

The Yasukuni Shrine, which commemorates millions of Japanese war dead, including war criminals, is viewed by neighboring countries as a symbol of Japan's colonial past.