LDP official's remarks concerning colonization of Korea distorts history

Aso Taro, who chairs the Liberal Democratic Party Policy Research Council, in an address to the Tokyo University campus festival on May 31 glossed over a historical fact that Koreans under Japanese colonial rule were forced to adopt Japanese surnames.

Imperial Japan in February 1940 launched a policy of integrating Koreans as the Emperor's subjects by forcing them to adopt Japanese names instead of Korean names.

Japanese Communist Party Secretariat Head Ichida Tadayoshi at a news conference held in the Diet Building on June 2 criticized Aso for distorting history. He pointed out that imperial Japan's name policy for Koreans was aimed at making them loyal subjects of the Japanese emperor.

"The problem is that a top LDP official in charge of policy affairs has overturned the LDP's official view that 'it was an inappropriate' measure," said Ichida.

South Korea's political parties, ruling and opposition alike, criticized the Aso remark and demanded that he apologize to the Korean people and retract the remark.

Aso apologized for causing misunderstanding between Japan and South Korea, but refused to withdraw the remark.

Aso Taro, the head of a Dietmembers group which is closely associated with rightists who advocate a revision of the Constitution, has been implicated in promoting rightist history textbooks glorifying the war of aggression. He is also an advocate of the prime minister's visit to Yasukuni Shrine which enshrines Class-A war criminals along with other war dead. (end)