North Korea denounces Japan PM's offering to war shrine

Seoul, April 27 (IANS) North Korea has criticised Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba for making a ritual offering to a controversial war shrine in Tokyo, saying it again demonstrated Japan's pursuit of militarisation.

The North's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) issued the criticism in a commentary Saturday after Ishiba sent an offering last week to the Yasukuni Shrine, which honors Japanese war dead, including 14 Class A criminals convicted by the Allied forces after World War II.

A bipartisan group of Japanese lawmakers also visited the shrine in person to pay their respects at that time.

The KCNA denounced those actions by Japanese politicians as "the road to militarization," saying they would only precipitate the ruin of all of Japan.

The KCNA accused Japanese politicians of regularising their annual offerings and visits to Yasukuni, denouncing the moves as an attempt to "invariably and deeply implant the poison of militarism in the whole area of the archipelago with the shrine as the origin."

It also claimed that Japan is in the final stage of legal, institutional and military preparations for a continental invasion, referring to the country's recent launch of the Self-Defense Forces (SDF) Joint Operation Command and constitutional revisions, Yonhap news agency reported.

"The revision of Japan, which has systematically and extensively pushed forward with its political and military rearmament for decades since its defeat, is approaching as the reality, not expectation," the KCNA said.

Sending an offering or visiting the shrine has been a point of criticism from neighbouring countries like South Korea and China, which view such actions as an attempt to glorify the country's militaristic past.

Japan invaded China during World War II, and Korea was under Japan's colonial rule from 1910-45.

--IANS

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