But the Japanese still held the guns.The ship weighed 4,730 tons and, according to the court documents, there were 4,000 people on board. Here, as in most things, there are discrepancies: Korean sources speak of 7,000, 7,500 or even 10,000 passengers. Two days out to sea, at 5.20pm, the ship was passing through Maizuru Bay when it exploded and capsized. The dead numbered 524 Koreans and 25 Japanese according to the court (the highest Korean estimate of fatalities is 5,000). There are two versions of how they died.The Japanese story is that it was a pure accident: the ship hit a mine planted before the war’s end by attacking American forces.

The other version is the one set out in Souls Protest, an epic film produced in communist North Korea, and expected to be released in South Korea and Japan.Only a very generous critic would rate Souls Protest in the James Cameron league. The film’s special effects, according to early reviews, have more in common with early episodes of Doctor Who than with contemporary Hollywood computer animation. The galaxy of North Korean stars is unknown outside Pyongyang, and the 10,000 extras are mainly members of the Korean army seconded to the production at Kim Jong Il’s request. But the story it tells has made it a huge domestic hit.For, according to the film and to many South Koreans, the explosion in Maizuru Bay was deliberately set off by the ship’s Japanese crew, who were resentful at their country’s surrender.

“Putting together various pieces of evidence,” said one South Korean activist, Chon Jae Jin, “it’s likely that Japanese soldiers who were disgruntled about the fact Koreans were returning home committed mass murder by bombing the ship.”Yesterday the judge in Kyoto endorsed the naval mine theory, although he accepted the possibility that it was planted by the Japanese rather than the Americans. Korean activists now plan to follow up their victory with two more demands: that the ashes of the Korean victims be returned to their motherland, and that a monument to them be placed in a granite plinth on the Maizuru seabed.Meanwhile the North Korean producers of Souls Protest are negotiating distribution in South Korea and Japan: because of the Japanese Prime Minister’s recent visit to a controversial war shrine, the time is ripe for a bit of commercially viable Japan bashing.. After two days of eluding President Robert Mugabe’s law enforcement agents, I showed up at the Harare Central Police Station to turn myself in, as required, on the stroke of 10.30am. After two days of eluding President Robert Mugabe’s law enforcement agents, I showed up yesterday at the Harare Central Police Station to turn myself in, as required, on the stroke of 10.30am.The station is an intimidating place, perhaps the most sinister building in a city living under the shadow of President Mugabe’s volatile rule.I entered through the main door, passed a number of uniformed and plain-clothes policemen, turned down a long corridor and descended into a dark and dank basement.