Park Nam-soon, second from left, whose father is enshrined at Yasukuni Shrine, protests outside Japan's Supreme Court, Jan. 17, following the court's rejection of her and other plaintiffs' request to remove their relatives' names from the shrine. Yonhap

Angry Korean plaintiffs strongly protested and expressed frustration Friday after Japan's top court finalized its rejection of their request to remove their families' names from a controversial war shrine.

Japan's Supreme Court delivered the final decision earlier in the day on a request filed in 2013 by 27 family members seeking to eliminate their relatives' names from Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine.

Yasukuni Shrine honors millions of Japanese war dead, including 14 convicted Class A war criminals, and is seen by neighboring countries as a symbol of Japan's imperial past.

It also enshrines around 20,000 Koreans who were forcibly conscripted into the Japanese army and died during World War II when the Korean Peninsula was under Japan's colonial rule, including servicemen and civilian employees of the military.

The enshrinement of Koreans, carried out without any consent from their families, only came to light in the 1990s, prompting lawsuits from families seeking the removal of the victims' names from the shrine.

On Friday, the court finalized its rejection of the request, citing the expiration of the 20-year period to dispute such cases, saying the request should have been filed by 1979 to be effective. The enshrinement took place in 1959.

Korean plaintiffs, often children or siblings of the Korean victims, immediately protested the court decision, calling it unacceptable.

Park Nam-soon, one of the plaintiffs, tearfully told reporters outside the Supreme Court: "I am completely at a loss and dumbfounded. I don't know what to say."

Park, whose father is enshrined, refuted the court's decision, stating that her family had never been informed by Japan about his death or his enshrinement at Yasukuni Shrine and had been kept completely in the dark.

"We aren't asking for money. We are only asking for their names to be removed for their honor," Park said, adding that the plaintiffs will fight "to the end."

Kim Young-hwan from the Center for Historical Truth and Justice, a civic group supporting victims from the Japanese colonial rule, said the application of the 20-year legal period is "unacceptable."

He argued that families of the victims have never given their consent to the enshrinement, and that the Japanese government only provided information about the enshrinement to the South Korean government in the late 1990s and 2000s, making it effectively impossible to raise the issue before that time. (Yonhap)