Dozens of South Korean activists clashed with police Tuesday as they tried to install a statue to former slave workers in front of one of Japan’s consulates. South Korea and Japan are both democracies, market economies and U. S. allies that face North Korea’s nuclear threats and China
Dozens of South Korean activists clashed with police Tuesday as they tried to install a statue to former slave workers in front of one of Japan’s consulates.
South Korea and Japan are both democracies, market economies and U. S. allies that face North Korea’s nuclear threats and China’s growing economic might, but ties between them are marred by historical issues.
Many South Koreans bitterly resent Tokyo’s brutal 1910-45 colonisation of the Korean peninsula, when millions are known to have been forced into slave work for Japan, and former wartime sex slaves are another hugely emotional issue.
The activists tried to set up a bronze statue of an emaciated man holding a flaming torch in front of the Japanese consulate in the southern city of Busan to commemorate the forced labor victims.
