Sony has confirmed that Rise of the Ronin won’t be coming to South Korea when it releases on 22 March this year.
This was first noticed when Sony pulled the game from the Korean PlayStation Store and removed the title’s trailers from the PlayStation Korea YouTube account.
The commonly believed reason Rise of the Ronin is not releasing in South Korea is due to the comments made by the game’s director, Fumuhiko Yasuda, in a behind-the-scenes trailer released last week.
These comments were about Shōin Yoshida, a 19th-century scholar, who was seen as one of the driving forces of the Seikanron – a right-wing movement within the Japanese government in 1873 that unsuccessfully argued for an invasion of Korea.
“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 insisted on the importance of taking action,” Yasuda said about Yoshida.
Given this and Japan’s later violent occupation of Korea from 1910 to 1945, it’s understandable why South Korea could have concerns over these comments.
Sony, however, has maintained that this is not the reason for the game not releasing in South Korea.
Rise of the Ronin is a PS5 exclusive releasing on 22 March from well-known developer Team Ninja – made popular by titles such as Nioh, Nioh 2, and Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty.
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