Team Ninja’s upcoming PS5 exclusive Rise of the Ronin will not be releasing in South Korea.
Sony removed Rise of the Ronin from the Korean PlayStation store along with the game’s promotional material. The PlayStation Korea YouTube channel now only hosts the game’s trailer, doing away with all the other videos leading up to the game’s release next month.
Korean news bulletin site Ruliweb reported that Sony confirmed the removal of Rise of the Ronin from release in South Korea. However, no concrete reason was officially stated. However, from our understanding, the removal is due to Rise of the Ronin’s game director Fumuhiko Yasuda’s recent comment on a controversial historical figure. This was in the behind-the-scenes video on the game where Yashuda talked about 19th-century Japanese philosopher Shōin Yoshida.
Shōin Yoshida’s revolutionary teachings ignited a generation of samurai, including future Restoration leaders, to overthrow the Tokugawa shogunate and reinstate the emperor. Simultaneously, he is also seen as one of the driving forces of Seikanron, which translates to ’Advocacy of a punitive expedition to Korea’. Japan invaded and occupied Korea from 1910 to 1945, which was half a decade after Yoshida’s lifetime but thought of nonetheless as a fruition of his preached ideology.
For this reason, Yoshida remains a controversial character in Korea, and the reported glorification of his character by game director Yasuda naturally created massive backlash in the South Korean gaming community. In the video, Yasuda stated,
“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.”
Rise of the Ronin is slated to release globally on March 22 on PS5.
