S.Korea Hails Japanese Emperor’s Reference on Korean Kinship

S.Korea Hails Japanese Emperor’s Reference on Korean Kinship
At a press conference Sunday marking his 68th birthday, Akihito said that he “feels a certain kinship with Korea.”

Akihito said it was recorded in an eighth-century official history document, entitled Shoku Nihongi (Chronicles of Japan), that the mother of Emperor Kammu (736-806) was of the line of King Muryong who ruled the Paekche Kingdom, one of three ancient kingdoms of the Korean Peninsula in 501-523.

King Muryong had strong relations with Japan, and it was from his time that masters of the Five Chinese Classics (books on the teaching of Confucianism) were invited to Japan one after another to teach Confucianism, Akihito said.

In an apparent reference to Japan’s 1910-1945 colonial rule of the Korean peninsula, the emperor said “it is regrettable however that Japan’s exchanges with Korea have not all been of this kind. This is something that we should never forget.”