Rise of the Ronin's Korean Release Cancelled Following Commentary Controversy | Push Square

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If, like ourselves, you're only passingly familiar with the complex, extremely fraught history between Japan and Korea, you might have missed the significance of specific comments made by Rise of the Ronin director Fumuhiko Yasuda in a behind-the-scenes trailer released last week. We certainly did, despite reporting on the thing, and so were surprised to learn that Sony has since cancelled the upcoming title's Korean release.

Officially, no reason has been given, but it's reportedly due to Yasuda's comments, which, let's not forget, were widely disseminated in an official trailer uploaded on PlayStation's YouTube account. Spotted by Eurogamer, several Korean outlets began reporting that the game had been pulled from the Korean PlayStation Store, along with accompanying promotional material, and the trailer removed from the PlayStation Korea YouTube account. As reported on the Korean-language community site Ruliweb, Sony Interactive Entertainment Korea confirmed in a statement that Rise of the Ronin won't be released in the region, either physically or digitally.

In the first episode of a documentary-style series, Yasuda was shown visiting the Japanese city of Hagi and the Shoka Sonjuku School, founded by Shōin Yoshida, an influential 19th-century scholar. Yoshida's students would be key figures during the Meiji Restoration, which overthrew the Shogunate to restore Imperial rule to Japan. He was seen as one of the driving forces of the Seikanron (Jeonghanrok in Korea), a right-wing movement within the government in 1873 which argued for an invasion of Korea. While unsuccessful at that time, Japan would later occupy Korea from 1910 to 1945, committing numerous atrocities.

Yasuda said of Yoshida while touring the Shoka Sonjuku School: «Although it was a different world in a different time, I believe he could be compared to Socrates. I wanted to depict his teachings and his life from the moment I started working on Rise of the Ronin. He wasn't just a philosopher. He