A spokesman for the Association of Korean Victims of Forcible Drafting and Their Bereaved Families said in a statement on April 26 that the group visit to the shrine is a frontal challenge to justice and peace and a sinister political impudence.

The statement said that Japan provoked a war of overseas aggression in the last century to inflict untold misfortune and pain on Koreans and other Asian people.

It went on:

Through the persistent group visit to the shrine despite the blistering criticism and protest of the neighboring countries, the Japanese right-wing reactionaries are after an evil scheme to justify the past war of aggression and praise war criminals as "sacrifices to Asian peace and prosperity", so as to encourage the coming generations to go for overseas aggression without hesitation as the war criminals did in the past.

Their militarist hysteria for reinvading Korea and other Asian countries and realizing the pipedream of "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" at any cost through complete denial of the blood-stained history and instigation of revanchism has already gone beyond the red-line.

Any Japanese of reason should realize that the right-wing politicians' arrogant act against the climate of common peace and prosperity in Northeast Asia will make a mess of the future of posterity and invite a disaster.