A chief of a state foreign policy think tank said Tuesday that it is important for U.S. President Barack Obama to clarify Japan's responsibility for World War II should he visit the atom-bombed city of Hiroshima next month.

Shin Dong-ik, the head of the Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security under the state-run Korean National Diplomatic Academy, said in a contribution to the institute's periodical that such a clarification is needed to ensure that Tokyo remembers its wartime history.

Shin's remarks came amid reports that Obama is likely to visit Hiroshima on the sidelines of the summit of the Group of Seven industrialized nations, which is slated to take place from May 26-27 in Ishe-Shima, Mie Prefecture. 

"Should the president of the U.S. -- the closet ally of South Korea -- visit Hiroshima in the serious environment of peninsular and international security, we believe that it is important for him to clarify Japan's responsibility for World War II," he said in the contribution piece.

A controversy has been raging over Obama's possible visit to Hiroshima with critics saying that the visit would help project Japan as a victim of the war rather than an aggressor, and that the visit could give more weight to Japan's historical revisionism -- a set of moves to glorify or gloss over its past militarism.

Some observers said that the visit to the city by Obama, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 for his international efforts for nuclear disarmament, would give a boost to his much-publicized vision of a nuclear-free world.

Noting the complexities of Obama's potential visit to Hiroshima, Shin stressed that there are both "humanitarian aspects" related to the use of nuclear arms and "sensitive emotional factors" associated with the troubled history, both of which Obama may have to take into account.

"Japan's act of highlighting the victims of the nuclear bombing -- at a time when Japan's atonement for its history of invasion has weakened -- makes us doubt whether Japan pretends to be a victim while avoiding the responsibility as a perpetrator," he wrote in the contribution.

Saying that Korea "seriously" shares the humanitarian concerns related to nuclear weapons, Shin, however, pointed out that it is hard to support the logic that South Korea should completely dismiss the idea of its nuclear armament, even in the face of Pyongyang's nuclear provocation. (Yonhap)