Japan's prime minister has returned a donation he received from a foreign national, his office said through a lawyer on Friday, four weeks after the scandal looked set to cost him his job. Prime Minister Naoto Kan - Japan's fifth premier in as many years - was under mounting pressure over the $12,500 donation from a Korean citizen when a massive earthquake struck, wiping politics off the front pages.
Less than a week before the 9.0-magnitude quake and tsunami of March 11, Kan's foreign minister Seiji Maehara, who was widely tipped to replace his embattled boss, resigned for taking a similar donation. Kan handed back the 1.04 million yen donation from a South Korean resident in Japan on March 14, said Yoichi Kitamura, a lawyer authorised to speak on behalf of Kan's office. "On that day, an official document had confirmed that (the donor) is of South Korean nationality," the lawyer said in a statement.