Japan's Prime Minister Naoto Kan was set to issue an apology on Tuesday for the country's past colonial rule of the Korean peninsula ahead of the 100th anniversary of the annexation. Japanese media reports said Kan, who took office in June, would express his 'deep remorse and heartfelt apology' in line with a landmark 1995 statement issued by then prime minister Tomiichi Murayama. The government led by Kan's centre-left Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) was expected to approve the statement at a cabinet meeting Tuesday morning. Kan was expected to issue the statement to commemorate this month's 100th anniversary of the annexation, a significant part of Japan's imperialist expansion in the rest of Asia. Japan colonised Korea from 1910, signing an annexation treaty on August 22 which took effect on August 29 that year. The annexation ended on August 15, 1945, when Japan surrendered to the US-led allies in World War II. The Korean peninsula was then divided into a communist North and a capitalist South. Successive Japanese prime ministers in recent decades have expressed regrets for the country's wartime aggression in Asia. But such sentiments have been dismissed as insincere by Asian neighbours, partly because of comments made by some conservative lawmakers who refuse to admit to Japan's past aggression. In the statement issued on August 15, 1995, Murayama, only the second socialist to head a Japanese government, expressed 'deep remorse' and offered a 'heartfelt apology' towards Asian nations. Japan, pursuing a 'mistaken' national policy through 'colonial rule and aggression, caused tremendous damage and suffering to the people of many countries, particularly to those of Asian countries', Murayama said. Chief cabinet secretary Yoshito Sengoku said last week that Kan was considering issuing a statement marking the centenary of the colonial rule while seeking to 'build a forward-looking relationship' with South Korea. Sengoku, once a lawyer who worked for the rights of ethnic Koreans in Japan, said the government should consider compensating individuals for the colonial rule. But this comment has further angered many conservative politicians, some in the ruling party, who believed a new statement would be redundant and add to Japan's 'diplomacy of apology'. Japan and South Korea normalised relations in 1965 with Tokyo extending massive economic aid to Seoul, which agreed not to demand reparations for the colonial rule. 