A Japanese conservative activist has angered the Korean people for attempting to set up a provocative wooden post in the heart of Seoul to lay claim to South Korea's easternmost islets of Dokdo, police said Friday.
The man, known as Nobuyuki Suzuki, is accused of tying a post with the phrase Dokdo is Japanese territory to a symbolic statue of a wartime Korean sex slave in front of the Japanese embassy in downtown Seoul Tuesday, police said, adding the post was immediately removed and an investigation has been launched into the incident.
Suzuki committed the provocative act after unsuccessfully attempting to place the 90-centimeter white wooden post in front of the bronze statue, they said.
The statue of a young girl, which was set up in December by former sex slaves and their supporters, symbolizes Korean women who were forced into Japanese military brothels during World War II.
Japan, which ruled the Korean Peninsula between 1910 and 1945 as a colony, has repeatedly renewed its claim to Dokdo in the East Sea.
The man, who described himself as a patriotic political force, later returned to Japan where he posted photos and video of the wooden post on his blog.
Police also suspect that Suzuki set up a similar wooden post near a museum on the victims of Japan's sexual slavery in western Seoul on June 18.
A Japanese embassy spokesman was not immediately available for comment.
The latest incident has reignited South Korea's lingering public resentment against Japan over Tokyo's territorial claim and the issue of sexual slavery.
An unidentified South Korean posted on the Internet that South Korea should let the world know Japan's wartime crimes more clearly.
Japan has acknowledged that its wartime military used sex slaves. Still, Tokyo refuses to issue an apology or compensate the victims individually, citing a 1965 treaty that normalized ties between the two countries. (Yonhap)