South and North Korean Buddhists have joined hands to seek the return of Korean cultural relics illegally taken to Japan during the Japanese colonial era.

A court in Tokyo held a hearing on Wednesday on the return of the cultural artifacts, part of a donation called the Ogura Collection.

At the hearing, South Korean Buddhist monk Hyemoon, said that Takenosuke Ogura, a Japanese businessman, donated about one thousand works of art to the Tokyo National Museum in 1981 and 34 of them had been smuggled out of Korea during the colonial era.

Hyemoon claimed that the museum should not house the illegally acquired items according to ethics code of the World Museum Community.
He also submitted an inter-Korean joint statement calling for the return of the items.

The statement in the name of Cha Kun-chol from the North Korean Buddhist Association announced that the Buddhist organizations of the two Koreas will jointly seek the repatriation of all Korean cultural properties illegally sent to Japan.

The Ogura Collection is comprised of 14-hundred items of cultural artifacts that Ogura illegally sent to Japan during the colonial era.

The Tokyo National Museum claims that the issue was all settled when the two nations signed a treaty in 1965.