MAINICHI
 
President Tadakazu Kimura of The Asahi Shimbun newspaper, which came under heavy fire for past reports about "comfort women" and the Fukushima nuclear crisis, is planning to announce his resignation in mid-November, a source familiar with the situation said Wednesday.
 
In a document uploaded to an internal website Friday, Kimura made known his plan for his resignation plan in November and changes in management at an extraordinary meeting of shareholders Dec. 5, according to the source.
 
The Asahi, one of the nation's leading newspapers, retracted in early August articles from the 1980s and 1990 that reported a Japanese man's statements that women on a Korean island were forcibly and violently taken to work in wartime Japanese military brothels. The paper said it determined that his statements were false.
 
In September, it withdrew an exclusive report in May that said most workers left the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant after the 2011 quake and tsunami, violating the plant chief's order to stay put. The Asahi said it could not grasp that the workers just evacuated because the instruction was not communicated thoroughly and thus gave a wrong impression that they fled.
 
At a press conference on Sept. 11 announcing the retraction of the Fukushima report, Kimura suggested that he would resign to take responsibility, apologizing for "severely undermining the confidence of readers."