A local memorial association said Tuesday that it has filed a defamation suit against a Japanese activist accused of setting up a provocative wooden stake in Japan last month to lay claim to Dokdo.
Nobuyuki Suzuki, a member of an ultra-right Japanese party, allegedly put the wooden post with a phrase claiming Japan’s sovereignty over South Korea’s Dokdo islets next to a monument commemorating Yun Bong-gil, a Korean independence fighter, located in Kanazawa of Ishikawa Prefecture on Sept. 22.
He then took photos of the scene and posted them on his blog along with derogatory comments about the deceased heroic figure who was executed in Japan during Japan’s 1910-45 colonization of the peninsula after attempting to assassinate Japanese leaders, the Patriot Yun Bong Gil Memorial Association said. (Yonhap News)
“Suzuki should be punished for putting stakes at Yun’s memorial statue and calling him a terrorist,” the association said in a statement.
Suzuki has snubbed Seoul prosecutors’ summoning for questioning in connection with a separate defamation suit. A group of former South Korean sex slaves for Japan’s wartime soldiers sued the 47-year-old conservative activist for placing insulting signs on a symbolic statue of a sex slave in front of the Japanese Embassy in downtown Seoul in June.
The activist is also facing another defamation suit as he was revealed to have masterminded launching a similar vandalism against two history-related institutes in Seoul in August.
Japan has repeatedly renewed its claim to Dokdo in the East Sea while rejecting Seoul’s demand for talks on compensating the sexual slavery victims. (Yonhap News)
