A Japanese pastor living in Seoul said Wednesday he has sent a letter to Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda to protest his government's claim to South Korea's easternmost islets of Dokdo.
Kozo Yosida, the 70-year-old pastor of the Japanese Church in Seoul, said he faxed the letter to the Japanese Embassy here and the Tokyo government on Monday after Noda expressed regret over Korean President Lee Myung-bak's Aug. 10 visit to Dokdo.
Lee was the first South Korean president to visit the islets that lie closer to Korea in the body of water dividing the Korean Peninsula and Japan. Tokyo has strongly protested the visit and suggested settling the issue at the International Court of Justice.
In the letter, the pastor said Dokdo is a part of South Korea under various international agreements and treaties that followed World War II. Japan ruled the Korean Peninsula as a colony from 1910 to 1945.
Yosida also agreed with Lee's remarks that Japanese Emperor Akihito should apologize for the forced occupation if he wishes to visit Korea.
"Considering how Japan jailed, tortured and killed (Korean) independence fighters during its forced occupation, and what it did to the 150,000 to 200,000 (Korean) girls it took away as 'comfort women,' it is only fair to demand an apology from the current emperor who is an heir to the top leader at the time," Yosida wrote in his letter.
"I want to ask Japanese government officials how much they know about the brutal and ruthless acts committed by their country and the pain it caused to the Korean people."
Yosida, who has been a pastor in Korea since 1981, sent a similar letter to Noda last December after the Japanese government sought to remove a monument from outside the Japanese Embassy in Seoul that represents Korean women forced into sexual slavery for the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II.
Seoul demands a sincere apology and compensation for the sex slaves, euphemistically called "comfort women," while Tokyo insists the matter was resolved through a 1965 treaty that normalized relations between the two countries. (Yonhap)