I hope they give this guy some serous jail time because if not this will just encourage other nut jobs to do the same thing. I think this should be considered attempted murder because someone could have been killed by this bomb:
This file photo shows a South Korean man, identified only by his surname Chon, who has been indicted over the suspected bombing last year of a public restroom at a Tokyo war shrine. In his first court hearing at the Tokyo District Court on June 14, 2016, Chon admitted to his involvement in the bombing, news reports said. (Yonhap)
A South Korean man admitted Tuesday to his involvement in the suspected bombing last year of a public restroom at a Tokyo war shrine in his first court hearing at the Tokyo District Court, news reports said.
The 28-year-old suspect, identified only by his surname Chon, has been indicted on charges of breaking into the premises of Yasukuni Shrine on Nov. 23 and bombing the public restroom.
Chon was arrested in December shortly after voluntarily returning to Tokyo by plane.
In Tuesday’s hearing, prosecutors said Chon attempted to install an explosive device with a digital timer at the main hall of the shrine out of his discontent over the war-linked shrine that honors Japanese wartime leaders who were convicted as war criminals.
But he put it in the restroom instead after failing to do so due to tight security, they said.
Chon’s defense counsel reportedly asked the court to give him a reduced penalty as the incident is not a grave one as no one was injured and he has no chance of repeating the offense as he will find it difficult to enter Japan again down the road. [Yonhap]
You can read the rest at the link, but the other nut jobs the anti-Korean activist group, Zaitokukai showed up to the hearing to protest against Chon and had a lot of bad things to say about Koreans in general.
Considering that the article states this group is practicing “hate speech” it looks like it is probably the Zaitokukai group that has been protesting not only North Korea, but also South Korea’s claims to Dokdo and the comfort women issue:
Riot police try to form a barrier between members of the ultraconservative anti-Korean Zaitokukai organization and a group of counterprotesters in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward in May 2013. | SATOKO KAWASAKI
The Japanese city of Kawasaki, where anti-Korean rallies are often held, has refused to allow an anti-Korean organization from using a park to hold a demonstration.
Japan’s Kyodo News reported on Tuesday that the city government decided not to allow an anti-Korean group to hold a protest on Sunday at a park in the city.
The city government’s decision marks the first such case since Japan legislated the antihate speech law aimed at preventing rallies against a specific race or country of origin.
Kyodo reported that the organization held 13 anti-Korean rallies in the city since 2013.
Kawasaki Mayor Norihiko Fukuda said that it is very regrettable that hate speech rallies have been held around the city, adding that the latest decision was made to ensure the safety of citizens who are targeted by unfair and discriminatory words and acts. [KBS World Radio]
Here is an example of what the Zaitokukai group says during their protests:
But despite their purported political nature, a “significant” number of the demonstrations in reality featured a string of derogatory invective against ethnic minorities, Maeda said.
Prominent examples of vitriolic language favored by the protesters include violent slogans such as “You should all be massacred,” phrases such as “Get the hell out of Japan,” and insults calling Koreans “cockroaches,” according to video analysis of 72 such rallies conducted by the ministry.
In the rallies, participants typically brandish placards and yell epithets while marching on the streets of neighborhoods home to large numbers of ethnic Koreans such as Shin-Okubo in Tokyo and Tsuruhashi in Osaka.
The ministry, meanwhile, attributed a recent drop in the frequency of these rallies to a 2014 Osaka High Court ruling that ordered Zaitokukai to pay about ¥12 million in damages for a series of hateful rallies it organized in front of a Kyoto-based Korean school.
The survey also followed an unprecedented move by the ministry last December to issue an official warning to Zaitokukai to halt its hateful activities. [Japan Times]
You can read more at the link, but that is pretty provocative to march down Shin-Okubo and say stuff like that. Whenever I go to Tokyo I usually find a place to stay in Shin-Okubo because it is a fairly cheap to find a place to stay there with one of the Korean owned hotels.
