One of the Buddhist Statues Stolen from Tsushima Island Returned

On July 15, the South Korean Prosecutors’ Office announced that they will return a bronze standing statue of Buddha, nationally designated as an Important Cultural Property, one of the two Buddhist statues that were stolen in 2012 from a shrine and temple in Tsushima City, Nagasaki Prefecture, and brought into South Korea. The statue was handed over from South Korea to Japan on July 17 and were shown to the press at the Nagasaki Prefectural Tsushima Museum of History and Folklore on the following day. However, the decision on the other stolen statue, a seated Kanzeon Bodhisattva, designated as a Nagasaki Prefectural Tangible Cultural Property, was postponed because of a court injunction by Buseoksa temple in central South Korea preventing the return of the statue to Japan until it could be determined how it had originally been brought to Japan. (Japanese)