South Korea scolded Japanese ministers and lawmakers Tuesday for paying homage at a controversial war shrine in Tokyo, saying such visits are evidence that Tokyo has never really repented for its wartime atrocities.

Seoul's foreign ministry spokesman Cho Tai-young made the remarks a day after Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se canceled this week's planned visit to Japan in a diplomatic reprisal for visits by Japanese ministers to the Yasukuni shrine.

Ignoring anger voiced by South Korea and China, nearly 170 Japanese lawmakers visited the shrine on Tuesday, marking one of the largest-ever trips by Japanese lawmakers to the site that glorifies Japan's wartime past.

"The Yasukuni shrine is a site that enshrines war criminals and glorifies wars," Cho told reporters.

"Japanese leaders, including ministers, must understand why Minister Yun's visit to Japan was canceled and how neighboring countries think of such visits (to the shrine)," Cho said.

Cho called for Japanese ministers and lawmakers to have a "self-contemplation on how their visits to the Yasukuni shrine are being viewed by neighboring countries."

In South Korea, memories are still fresh over Japan's brutal colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula between 1910 and 1945, which left deep scars on the hearts of Koreans as they were banned from using their own language at schools and forced to adopt Japanese names. Hundreds of thousands of Koreans were also mobilized as forced laborers and sex slaves, euphemistically called "comfort women."

Worsening the mood in South Korea was an offering by Japan's nationalist Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of a "masakaki" tree that is traditionally used in rituals to the shrine, with his name written under his title of "prime minister."

Seoul's foreign ministry expressed "deep concern and regret" over the visits by Japanese ministers to the shrine that "glorifies Japan's wars of aggression that caused huge loss and pain to the peoples of neighboring countries and enshrines its war criminals." (Yonhap news)