South Korea said Tuesday it plans to demand the retraction of a Japanese newspaper column that likens President Park Geun-hye to a former Korean empress slain by Japanese agents.
Japanese conservative daily Sankei Shimbun carried a column on its homepage Monday critical of Park's plan to attend a massive military parade in Beijing marking China's victory over Japan in World War II.
Calling Park's decision an example of "toadyism," the column said Korea's Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910) had a woman of power just like Park, referring to Empress Myeongseong.
Myeongseong, who was considered a major obstacle to Japan's overseas expansion, was murdered in 1895 by agents under Miura Goro, the then Japanese minister to Korea.
"I understand that our embassy in Japan will request the article's deletion and prevention of recurrences from the newspaper in question in an appropriate manner," Foreign Ministry spokesman Noh Kwang-il said during a press briefing. "Our government does not feel it is worth commenting on certain figures in Japan who continue to make shameless claims about the past, with a DNA of historical distortion and revision, and an outrageous article by a newspaper linked to them."
The protest is expected to be lodged "in the near future."
Asked by a Japanese reporter why the complaint is being sent through the embassy, not directly to the newspaper, Noh stressed that he did not rule out any options but simply said the embassy would choose an "appropriate method."
Last year, the paper's Seoul bureau chief reported rumors that Park may have been with a man at the time of the April 16 ferry sinking that left more than 300 people dead or missing.
The reporter is currently on trial here for charges of libel. (Yonhap)
