About 3,500 Unification Church members gathered in Seoul on Thursday to protest against what they call discriminatory and unfair Japanese media coverage of their church since former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's assassination.
The church has come under renewed scrutiny in Japan since the assassination of Abe in early July. The gunman has been quoted by investigators as saying that his family was ruined after his mother made large donations to the church, and that he believed the former prime minister had links to the religious organization.
"Stop biased reporting and religious persecution!" demonstrators in the South Korean capital chanted in Korean and Japanese, holding placards reading "Respect religious freedom!" and "Stop hate speech" toward the church.