North Korea Condemns Japan's Yasukuni Visits: "Outrageous Act Summoning the Specter of Militarism"

North Korea strongly condemned Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s offering of a ritual offering at Yasukuni Shrine and the mass visits by Japanese politicians. Calling them acts aimed at denying Japan’s history of past aggression and reviving militarism, it urged Japan to apologize and pay compensation.

Yonhap News Agency

According to the Korean Central News Agency on October 20, a spokesperson for the Association of Victims and Bereaved Families of Koreans Abducted by Japan issued a statement the previous day criticizing Japanese politicians’ visits to Yasukuni Shrine as “an outrageous act that summons the specter of militarism.”

The spokesperson said, “Japanese right-wing conservative politicians have once again staged the offering of ritual offerings and visits to Yasuguni Jinja (Yasukuni Shrine) on the occasion of the autumn grand festival.”

The spokesperson added, “This is an outright denial of Japan’s bloodstained history of past aggression, as well as a manifestation of the dangerous madness of militarism, which seeks to incite revanchism in Japanese society and realize, at all costs, the futile dream of a ‘Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.’ It cannot be justified by any excuse or pretext.”

The spokesperson also criticized changes to Japan’s defense policy, claiming that Japan was abandoning principles it had upheld as symbols of a pacifist state, including its exclusively defense-oriented policy, the Three Principles on Arms Exports, and the Three Non-Nuclear Principles, and was seeking to revive itself as a state at war.

The spokesperson particularly condemned discussions among Japanese political circles about creating conditions for the prime minister to visit Yasukuni Shrine, saying Japan was “trying to whip up an even fiercer storm of neo-militarism.”

The spokesperson urged Japanese politicians to sincerely apologize and pay compensation for their country’s past, saying that “the only thing they will gain from their mass visits is the fate of a second Tojo Hideki.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.