President Lee Myung-bak on Tuesday demanded that Japanese Emperor Akihito apologize for his country’s colonial atrocities should he want to visit South Korea, amid a rekindled diplomatic spat over Dokdo.

“If (the Japanese emperor) wants to visit Korea, he should visit the deceased independence fighters here and sincerely apologize to them,” Lee said during a meeting with local teachers in Icheon, Gyeonggi Province.

“If he would come here with (vague) words of regret, there is no need for him to come.”

He went on to stress, “Victimizers can forget the past. Victims cannot, only can forgive.”

In May 1990 when former President Roh Tae-woo visited Japan, the Japanese emperor expressed regret over his country’s past, but stopped short of offering a clear apology.

Later in the day, Seoul’s Foreign Ministry called on two Japanese cabinet ministers to nix their plans to visit the controversial Yasukuni Shrine on Wednesday that honors Japan’s war dead including Class-A criminals.

The two from the ruling Democratic Party of Japan are Transport Minister Yuichiro Hata and Jin Matsubara, the minister charged with dealing with the issue of Japanese kidnapped by North Korean agents.

Lee’s visit to Korea’s easternmost islets last Friday came as Japan, which is also mired in territorial disputes with China and Russia, has increasingly voiced its claim to Dokdo through its diplomatic and defense documents and school textbooks.

The rekindled spat has sharply worsened bilateral ties. Tokyo said it would consider referring the case to the International Court of Justice, a move Seoul dismissed as part of Japan’s strategy to make the case an international dispute.

Observers said that Lee’s recent moves calling for an apology stem from Tokyo’s failure to sincerely respond to Seoul’s repeated calls to properly settle historical issues stemming from its 1910-45 colonization of the Korean Peninsula.

Lee has particularly stressed the urgency of the issue of Korean women in their 80s who were forced into sexual slavery by Japan’s military during World War II. Currently, the number of the victims stands at 60. Four have passed away so far this year.

By Song Sang-ho (sshluck@heraldcorp.com)