statement, talk

The director of the Institute for Japanese Studies of the DPRK Foreign Ministry on June 15 issued the following press statement titled “Facing up to history and liquidating its past is an unavoidable moral duty and international legal obligation of Japan, a war criminal state”:

The historic day is coming closer when the Japanese imperialists, who had stained the Asian continent with blood and inflicted unprecedentedly tragic disaster and misfortune upon the peoples of the regional countries, knelt down and declared their unconditional surrender 80 years ago.

According to recent media reports, there is a heated debate in Japan over the issue of releasing its prime minister’s press statement as regards the past war of aggression to mark the 80th anniversary of Japan’s defeat.

Conscientious organizations and personages are demanding that the government clearly clarify its stand on apology at the important historic point of time, whereas the ultra-right conservative politicians are strongly against that, insisting that Japan had put an end to the “diplomacy of apology” by dint of Abe’s press statement, which was issued on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the conclusion of the war.

What cannot be overlooked is that the present Japanese prime minister is taking a vague attitude in this regard, trying to gloss over the issue by making public his personal views after the review of the Second World War.

The “review of the war” to be conducted by Japan is not the verification of the crime of war of aggression committed by it in the past, but an extremely inessential and misleading one like the institutional issue that the government failed to prevent the military’s authoritarian action and the circumstances that the military caused civilian damage by staging the reckless war.

In particular, the remarks the prime minister made during the recent parliamentary debate on the release of his press statement that the civilian control method, in which the “officer of the Self-Defence Forces” is not allowed to appear in the Diet under the present constitutional law, is to be held accountable are as good as a revelation of the sinister scheme to pave the way for the legalization of the “Self-Defence Forces” through the “review of the war”.

Japan is trying to downplay the 80th anniversary of its defeat with specious words like the “review of the war” and “its achievements as a peaceful state”, while talking about the “termination of the diplomacy of apology” before the eyes of the international community. This is an unpardonable mockery of and insult to the peoples of the DPRK and other Asian countries who suffered wounds that cannot heal forever owing to the unparalleled hideous crimes of the Japanese imperialists and an undisguised challenge to international justice and conscience.

History has recorded many war criminal states which brutally destroyed the peace and civilization of mankind while seeking pleasure in aggression against other countries and nations, but it is only Japan which is subject to international criticism for its persistent distortion of history and evasion of settlement of its past.

Abe’s press statement, which the right-wing conservative forces of Japan are trying to take as a “review of the past history of aggression”, is consistent with shameless sophism that the next generation should not be made destined to keep making an apology and there is no more apology for the history of aggression, far from making a frank admission and sincere apology for the past crimes.

Although decades have passed and the world witnessed the turn of the century, the Korean people clearly remember the thrice-cursed crimes committed by the Japanese imperialists, who inflicted huge human, material, mental and cultural damage on Korea while perpetrating barbarous colonial fascist rule for over 40 years after occupying it with arms.

The Japanese imperialists brutally massacred more than one million Koreans, hurled more than 8.4 million young and middle-aged people into theatres of war of aggression and slave labour sites after forcibly abducting them and reduced 200 000 young Korean women to sex slaves of the Japanese army. Those were hideous unethical crimes unprecedented in history.

The Japanese imperialists made desperate efforts to deprive the Koreans of their names and language to wipe the Korean nation with a history spanning thousands of years and brilliant culture out of the world map, while claiming that the “Japanese and Koreans are of the same descent” and “Korea and Japan are one”. They did not hesitate to destroy and plunder at random the precious cultural assets and rich natural resources of Korea.

For the past 80 years since its defeat, Japan has seriously threatened the sovereignty of the DPRK and its right to development and existence while persistently refusing to make an apology and reparations for its crimes against the Korean people and continuously pursuing its policy hostile towards the DPRK. It has kept piling up crimes by encroaching upon the national rights of the Koreans in Japan, descendants of the victims of forcible drafting.

A Japanese media outlet once said that if the documents recording the criminal acts committed by the Japanese imperialists in Korea and other Asian countries were piled up, they would be as high as 20 000 metres. And the data on the germ warfare atrocities of the notorious Unit 731 and other pieces of powerful evidence that are still being found disclose the unethical crimes committed by the Japanese imperialist devils in human shape.

History cannot be erased by ink, burned by fire and torn by sword.

The history of the aggressor, war criminal state, remains forever no matter how desperately Japan tries to erase its past crimes and evade its responsibility for them with all sorts of tricks, and no statute of limitations is applicable to unheard-of unethical crimes even after 80 or 800 years.

Facing up to history and liquidating its past is an unavoidable moral duty and international legal obligation Japan, a war criminal state, has before the times and mankind in the run-up to the 80th anniversary of its defeat when its blood-stained past is in the spotlight.