Prosecutors send back provocative 'Dokdo' stake to Japanese activist

South Korean prosecutors said on Monday they returned a provocative wooden stake sent by a Japanese right-wing activist who refused to come to Seoul to be questioned about his alleged violations of South Korean laws in laying claim to Dokdo.    Nobuyuki Suzuki, known as a member of an ultra-right Japanese party, was sued by a group of former South Korean sex slaves for Japan's wartime soldiers for defamation in connection with a controversial wooden post he tied to a symbolic statue of a sex slave in front of the Japanese Embassy in downtown Seoul in June.    The wooden post had Japanese words that read, "Dokdo is Japanese territory," referring to the easternmost South Korean islets in the East Sea.    The statue of a young girl was set up in December by a group of elderly Korean women and their supporters to symbolize Korean women who were forced to serve as sex slaves at Japanese military brothels during World War II.    South Korean prosecutors earlier this month sent summons, asking the Japanese activist to come to Seoul for questioning on Sept. 18. An officer at a Seoul police station displays wooden posts while announcing the outcome of a probe into their illegal setup by Japanese activists on Aug. 28, 2012. Two Japanese men in their 60s and 30s secretly set up the posts claiming, "Dokdo is a Japanese territory" in front of the entrances of the Dokdo Research Institute and the Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan in Seoul on April 22, according to the officer. Dokdo is South Korea's easternmost islets in the East Sea between South Korea and Japan, and some 200,000 Asian women, mostly Koreans, were forcibly taken by the Japanese military into sexual slavery during World War II. (Yonhap file photo) Snubbing the summons, Suzuki said in a message posted on his blog last Saturday that he had sent a similar wooden Dokdo stake to the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office.    The wooden stake was delivered to the foreign criminal affairs department of the prosecutors' office in charge of the case, officials said, adding they declined to accept it and sent it back to him.    As Suzuki also denied any wrongdoing in connection with the case and refused to respond to the South Korean summons, Seoul's authorities are reviewing diverse measures, including asking Japan for his extradition or indicting him without questioning, the officials said.    Historians say up to 200,000 women, mostly Koreans, were forced into sexual slavery for Japan's World War II soldiers.    South Korea is pressing Japan to pay compensation and extend a formal apology to the victims but Tokyo refuses to do so, saying the matter was settled by a 1965 treaty that normalized relations between the two countries.    Tensions run high between the two neighbors over Tokyo's repeated claim to the South Korean islets and its leaders' frequent denial of Japan committing any wartime atrocities, including the sexual slavery of Korean women, euphemistically called "comfort women."