South Korean political and religious leaders remembered Pope Francis for his compassion toward the victims of conflict and disaster.
"I deeply appreciate his special efforts for peace on the Korean Peninsula," National Assembly Speaker Woo Won-shik wrote on his Facebook page
On a visit to South Korea in 2014, Francis met with Lee Yong-soo, who was forced into sexual servitude by the Japanese military during World War II.
"He must have gone to a good place," Lee, now 96, said of the pontiff following his death.
"The pope was someone who transcends religious boundaries and shared in the suffering of humanity with humility and compassion," the Yonhap news agency quoted Ven. Jinwoo, leader of the Jogye order, South Korea's largest Buddhist sect, as saying.
In 2019, Francis became the second pope to visit Japan, 38 years after John Paul II. He visited Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the only two cities to be hit by nuclear attacks at the end of World War II.
"The use of atomic energy for purposes of war is immoral," he said in Hiroshima, "just as the possessing of nuclear weapons is immoral."
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