South Korean gets 4 years for Tokyo shrine blast
Chon Chang-han damaged the ceiling of a visitors’ restroom at Yasukuni shrine after igniting a gunpowder-filled metal pipe
A South Korean man was sentenced to four years in prison Tuesday for detonating a homemade pipe bomb at a controversial Tokyo war shrine.
During the trial Chon Chang-han, 28, reportedly admitted to illegally entering the shrine and detonating the bomb in a case that highlighted lingering tensions over Japan’s former colonial rule of the Korean peninsula.
Judge Kazunori Karei said in the ruling that a lot of planning had gone into the crime as Chon made gunpowder based on information he gathered on the Internet and repeatedly tested igniting the powder after filling metal pipes with it.
“It was highly premeditated and atrocious in that, for instance, the device was put in a place where people could come and go freely,” the judge said.
However, Karei avoided characterising Chon’s act as “terrorism”, a term prosecutors had used in describing it in their closing arguments. The prosecutors said that Chon had carried out a “terrorist act based on a dangerous idea.”