December 2011 Arson Attack
On December 26, 2011 a man attempted to burn down a 13 meter high gate column at Yasukuni. The incident was captured on video and the fire quickly put out by security staff. Japanese police gained an arrest warrant for a 37 year old Chinese man, who had been arrested earlier the same month for throwing Molotov cocktails at the Japanese embassy in Seoul. The man, Liu Qiang, served a 10 month sentence in South Korea for the embassy attack. Japan formally asked South Korea to extradite him, and China informally requested repatriation of their citizen. Liu stated that he was motivated by "antihumanitarian acts by the militaristic Japan," and said that his (South Korean) maternal grandmother had been a sex slave for Japanese soldiers during the war and his great-grandfather had been tortured to death for protesting.
On January 3, 2013 the Seoul High Court declined Japan's extradition request, and on the following day Liu returned to China.
Read more about this topic: Controversies Surrounding Yasukuni Shrine
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