South Koreans protest ahead of Hatoyama visit

South Korea's civic group members held an anti-Japanese rally in Seoul on Thursday, a day ahead of Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama's visit to the South Korean capital to hold a summit with South Korean President Lee Myung-bak. The two state heads will discuss bilateral matters including North Korea's nuclear issues before the trilateral summit with China in Beijing on Saturday. A small group of South Koreans held the anti-Japanese protest at a park in Seoul, chanting slogans and tearing Japanese flags. Koreans have strong anti-Japanese sentiment since Japan colonised the Korean peninsula for 35 years. Many of them, however, expect the progressive Hatoyama administration to handle Korea-related matters in a different way to the previous conservative administrations. Japan and Korea have had disputes over a history textbook, former comfort women, small islands called Dokdo or Takeshima and Japanese politicians' visit to the Yasukuni Shrine for war criminals.