South Korea is considering scaling back ties with Tokyo after Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi visited a controversial war shrine but will keep up multilateral contacts, Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon said yesterday.

China, South and North Korea have protested against the visit as it shows Japanese leaders' refusal to repent for the country's militarist past because convicted World War II criminals are honored there along with other war dead.

"It may be worth considering differentiating bilateral and multilateral relations," Ban told a news conference, when asked if South Korea would scrap diplomatic exchanges with Japan.

Japan is part of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, which is scheduled to hold a meeting of leaders in South Korea's port city of Pusan next month.

Seoul is not expected to take action against Japan's participation there, but it has said an expected bilateral summit meeting between its president and Koizumi this year was unlikely.

"As a way of expressing our strong view on Yasukuni visits, another option would be to separate meetings with visiting Japanese politicians who have paid respects at the Yasukuni Shrine," Ban said.

A group of more than 100 Japanese parliamentarians visited the shrine last week after Koizumi.

(China Daily October 27, 2005)