[Yonhap News Photo]
A fire broke out Thursday on the premises of the Japanese Consulate in the southern city of Busan, with no damage reported, police said. The blaze has blackened a wall.
The fire was reported at around 6:00 am (2100 GMT) by a South Korean police guard on duty in a restricted place where wooden delivery boxes have been stored. Firefighters put down the blaze in seven minutes.
Pictures released by police showed a blackened wall and a pile of burned wood boards. It's not clear whether the blaze was caused by an arson as a police investigation was under way.
The investigation, however, has hit the snag because the Japanese consulate refused to allow access to the scene, which has been kept off limits due to diplomatic immunity, Yonhap News agency said.
In July, a 28-year-old South Korean man received a four-year jail sentence in Japan on charges of detonating a crude time bomb in a public restroom at the controversial Yasukuni Shrine on November 23 last year. No one was hurt, and he was arrested after returning to Tokyo in December.
South Korea and China regard the shrine that honors over 2.4 million war dead, including 14 convicted Class-A war criminals, as a symbol of Japan's past imperialism. Many South Koreans still harbor deep resentment against Japan over its 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula.
Aju News Lim Chang-won = cwlim34@ajunews.com
reporter
Park Sae-jin
swatchsjp@ajunews.com
