The Seoul government has expressed deep regrets over Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's offering to a controversial war shrine. 

A spokesman of the South Korean Foreign Ministry said Wednesday that Seoul expresses deep concerns over the fact that the leaders of the Japanese government and the parliament  made a visit and sent an offering to the Yasukuni Shrine. He said that such a move cannot be justified under any circumstance as Yasukuni is a symbolic structure of Japan's colonial rule and aggression. 

Abe sent a ritual offering  on Wednesday to the controversial war shrine that honors Japan's war dead and a number of Class-A war criminals. 

Earlier a group of f Japanese government officials and lawmakers visited the shrine to pay their respects.