Posted April. 01, 2005 23:26,
Nobutaka Machimura, the Japanese foreign minister, repeatedly asserted on April 1 that President Roh Moo-hyun didnt request that the Japanese prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, stop visiting Yasukuni Shrine.
Regarding his statement to the Japanese parliament two days before, in which he said that President Roh didnt raise a question over Prime Minister Koizumis visits to Yasukuni Shrine at the Korea-Japan summit at the end of last year, Foreign Minister Machimura stated at the news conference on April 1 that I thought that it would have been better if President Roh spoke more frankly, so I said it like that.
Machimura noted that although there was an ambiguous mention of a shrine problem between two leaders at the summit, President Roh didnt say that Prime Minister Koizumis visit to Yasukuni Shrine was not good or that Prime Minister Koizumi should stop visiting Yasukuni Shrine, while claiming that if the Yasukuni problem was that important, President Roh should have been more candid, as much as it was a summit between two leaders.
Meanwhile, once again, Japanese Education Minister Nariyaki Nakayama insisted that Dokdo should be specified as Japanese territory in a course of study at a news conference on the same day. Minister Nariyaki Nakayama also repeatedly maintained that its natural for Japanese to know from where to where Japan occupies its land and that teaching Japanese territory was not wrong, either.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Lee Kyu-hyung, who refuted Machimuras remarks by commenting on his inappropriate behavior and distortion of the truth the other day, rebuffed the Japanese foreign ministers remarks, saying, It is not worth making additional comments