The rally, held in front of the Japanese Embassy and attended by hundreds of people, was staged days before the 70th anniversary of the Allied victory in World War II that freed the Korean Peninsula from Japanese colonial rule.
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Television news footage showed other protesters reacting immediately, using a blanket and bottled water in a desperate effort to douse the flames before the emergency services arrived.
Kim Sun-min, who was among several people who rushed over to help put out the flames, said he didn’t notice the man before he set himself ablaze on a flower bed near the rally.
With the anniversary looming, the protest was larger than normal, with about 2,000 demonstrators, including three of the 47 known surviving Korean “comfort women”, as they were euphemistically called by Japan, organisers said.
South Korea’s Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se again urged Abe Wednesday to unambiguously uphold apologies made by past Japanese Cabinets.
Such acts are not limited to political protest.
The last such protest outside the Japanese embassy was in 2005, when a 54-year-old man set himself on fire during a protest over Japan’s claim to a set of South Korean-controlled islets in the East Sea (Sea of Japan). Japan, however, takes the position that the matter is settled and that the normalisation of diplomatic relations in 1965, which resulted in $800 million in reparations and loans, signalled the end of the issue, according to Business Insider.
South Korean man Choi Hyun-Il, from Kwangju City, 80 year, attempts to burn himself outside the Japanese embassy in Seoul, South Korea on August 12, 2015.
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Yoon Michigan Hyang, an activist for the former comfort women, said Choi occasionally joined the weekly rally, and was also an activist for Koreans forced to work by Japanese companies during Japan’s 1910-1945 colonization of the peninsula.
