A senior leader of South Korea's ruling party on Tuesday called Japan a "terrorist state" for having inflicted mass suffering on its neighbors in the past, a day after Japan's top government spokesman applied the "terrorist" label to a Korean independence hero. "If Ahn Jung Guen was a terrorist, then Japan was a terrorist state for having mercilessly invaded and plundered countries around it," said Hong Moon Jong, secretary general of the Saenuri Party, Kyodo News reported. Hong also said Japan has become "a subject of international condemnation for having twisted the historical facts, and with the visits by government officials to the Yasukuni Shrine".