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DPRK Condemns Japanese Prime Minister's Plan to Visit Yasukuni Shrine
The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) condemns Japanese Prime Minister Junichinro Koizumi's plan to visit the controversial Yasukuni shrine in Tokyo, according to a newspaper commentary on Tuesday.
The newly-elected Japanese prime minister said that "his intention to pay homage and thanks to the war dead remains unchanged, and he wishes to visit it," noted the commentary published in Tuesday's official newspaper Minju Joson.
This shows clearly that the new Japanese prime minister misses very much those who took the road of militarist aggression overseas and has the political design of pushing Japan again to militarism, said the commentary.
It is the public view that Japan will turn further to the right politically and its militarization will be accelerated as the right-wing conservative tendency and reactionary features of the Japanese ruling quarters have become clear, said the commentary.
Japan stands at a crossroads: to turn to peace in conformity with the trend of the times or to go against it by reviving militarism. If Japan fails to make the right choice, it will go to ruin and never rise again, added the commentary.
The Yasukuni shrine, a bastion of the wartime government- sponsored Shintoism and symbol of militarism in Japan before and during World War II, houses the memorial tablets of 14 class-A war criminals, including wartime Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, and some 2.4 million Japanese military personnel and officials who died in Japan's various wars.
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