editorial

The Japanese imperialists, who occupied Korea militarily in the last century, systematically distorted Korean history in order to eliminate the Korean people's sense of national independence.

With the Koreans’ March 1 Popular Uprising against the Japanese imperialists in 1919 as an occasion, they set up a “Korean history compilation committee” in December 1922 to distort and fabricate Korean history in earnest and renamed it “Korean history compilation society” in June 1925.

The principle of its activities was to reedit Korean history in favour of their colonial rule.

The society plundered all data on Korean history and culture, which had been owned by the feudal government and individuals of Korea, to make it their monopoly and distorted Korean history at will.

In particular, they intentionally deleted the history of Tangun's Korea from “History of Korea” in a bid to portray the history of the Korean nation as having started later than their history and persistently tried to “prove” that King Tangun, the founding father of Korea or founder king of Ancient Joson, was a mythical being invented by later generations, not an actual person.

They also misrepresented the history of ancient states of Korea as a history of primitive society and a legendary history. By doing so, they attempted to disguise the historical fact that Japan’s transition to civilized society took place later than Korea and fabricate the story that Japan preceded Korea in development.

Meanwhile, they tried to falsify Korean history as the one of vassal states of big powers in Asia.

The aim was to eradicate the national dignity and pride of the Koreans by imbuing them with the idea that the Korean people were an incapable nation which had never been independent historically. It was also to subject them to their colonial rule by infusing into them the capitulationist idea.

In order to justify their history of aggression against Korea, they described the incursion of their aggressor ship Unyo in 1875 into the territorial waters of Korea as self-defence and the Sino-Japanese war they staged between 1894 and 1895 and the Russo-Japanese war between 1904 and 1905 to gain exclusive control of Korea as “just wars” for “maintaining peace in the East” and “preserving Korea's independence”.

In the last century the Japanese imperialists distorted and fabricated Korean history at will to dull the Koreans’ sense of national independence and exterminate the Korean nation. Today, the Japanese authorities are totally denying and distorting their past crimes again.

History is not changed by denial and the past crimes cannot be covered up by the distortion of history.

Japan can never evade the responsibility for them.