Source: People's Daily Online/Xinhua
http://english.people.com.cn/200605/26/eng20060526_268689.html
On May 26, 2006 Xinhua reported, "The Tokyo District Court turned down on Thursday demands by former South Korean soldiers and their family members who asked Japan to stop enshrining Korean war dead at the notorious Yasukuni Shrine, local press reported. The court said the decision made by the Yasukuni to enshrine the Korean war dead was unrelated with the state's supply of information. The plaintiffs said they will appeal to the high court, Kyodo news reported. Before 1987, Japan's then Health and Welfare Ministry had been submitting to the [s]hrine lists of war dead, including Koreans with Japanese nationality. The Koreans enshrined in the Yasukuni were among some 60,000 soldiers and civilians who were taken to former Soviet labor camps at the end of the World War II. The 414 plaintiffs, 161 former South Korean soldiers and civilian personnel who were enlisted in the Japanese military and 253 members of the bereaved families, have argued that the enshrinement breached Japan's constitution which bans the state from engaging in religious activities, and violated their ethnic personal rights since they do not practice Shinto, the Japanese indigenous religion. They have also been seeking 4.4 billion yen (about 40 million U. S. dollars) in compensation. The Yasukuni shrine is regarded as a symbol of the Japanese militarism. The shrine honors more than 2 million Japanese war dead along with 14 Japan's wartime leaders charged as Class-A war criminals, who are responsible for the most atrocious crimes during Japan's war of aggression against its Asian neighbors."