Yasukuni Shrine: South Korea man arrested in connection with Japan blast

During the November 23 incident, in which no one was hurt, a loud bang was heard and smoke was seen rising from a public bathroom on the shrine’s leafy grounds.

The Tokyo police at around 11 a.m. arrested the man surnamed Jeon, thought to have been captured in CCTV footages on the day of the blast, as soon as he arrived at Haneda Airport, Japanese media reported.

On the floor of a stall in the restroom was a digital timer, and batteries with Korean lettering on them were also left scattered around. He was detained when he returned to Japan from South Korea on Wednesday morning. He is now said to be under investigation.

The change will affect Japan’s domestic seaweed farmers, as South Korean nori now commands 9 percent of the Japanese market. Jeon was seen prior to the blast on security camera footage in the area carrying a backpack and another bag, the Sankei newspaper said on its website.

The shrine in central Tokyo honours millions of Japan’s war dead, including several senior military and political figures convicted of war crimes after World War II and is a flashpoint for clashing nationalist sentiments in Northeast Asia. Japanese media reported that Mr. Jeon said he didn’t know anything about the incident.

A DNA test on a cigarette butt found in the toilet matched that of possessions of Jeon’s in the hotel room in which he was staying, according to Fuji News Network.

The suspect had returned to South Korea following the incident that occurred at the shrine on a national holiday last month.

“The suspect entered the inner premises of Yasukuni Shrine with no justifiable reason” sometime between November 22 and 23, a police spokesman said, reading from a prepared statement. It is the result of an agreement reached with the South Korean government aimed at ending a dispute over the trade. In 2013, a South Korean man was arrested for entering the compound with inflammable liquids.

The South Korean Foreign Ministry said it had been informed of Mr. Jeon’s arrest and a local consular official has been dispatched to assist him.

Public broadcaster NHK said police approached the man at Tokyo’s Haneda airport and arrested him on a charge of illegal entry into the shrine.