Abe training jet photo sparks outrage in South Korean media
Tokyo accused of provocation as associations with wartime butchery stir painful memories
Major South Korean newspapers splashed a photo of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in a military trainer jet on their front pages yesterday, saying it was a reminder of Japan's colonial-era atrocities.
The picture showed a smiling Abe giving a thumbs-up from the cockpit of an air force T-4 training jet numbered 731.
The number evoked memories of Unit 731 - a Japanese biological and chemical warfare research facility that carried out lethal human experiments during the 1937-45 Sino-Japanese War and the second world war.
The unit was based in Harbin, and held prisoners from China, Korea and the Soviet Union.
The press in Seoul suggested the Abe picture was an intended affront to countries like China and South Korea, which suffered under Japanese occupation and colonisation.
"Abe's endless provocation!" said the picture caption on the front page of the country's largest daily, the Chosun Ilbo.
"Abe's pose resurrects horrors of Unit 731," ran the headline in the English-language JoongAng Daily.