Today's News

After occupying Korea by force of arms in the past century, the Japanese imperialists plundered lots of resources from it.

This can be proved by the “forest land survey act” fabricated and proclaimed by the Japanese imperialists.

From the early days of their military occupation of Korea, the Japanese imperialists regarded its abundant forest resources as an important material foundation for securing the financial resources for the execution of the war of aggression.

Accordingly, they conducted a survey of all forests of the country from March to August 1910 and on the basis of it fabricated and announced the “forest act” in June the following year.

In the act, they stipulated that “the governor-general of Korea can include all forests in the forest reserves if necessary” and thus created conditions for plundering any forest under the signboard of forest reserve. And the law also stipulated that the forests of Korea can be turned into “state-owned forests” and they can be freely transferred and sold to Japanese capitalists or organizations or exchanged with them.

The moves of the Japanese imperialists for plundering forest resources were not confined to this.

They proclaimed the “forest land survey act” in May 1918 and carried out the “survey” on forest lands in order to plunder the forests of Korea in an organized way.

The act which was fabricated and proclaimed on the pretext of finally establishing the right to ownership of forests in Korea was in essence aimed at turning the forests into completely their own.

During the survey, the Japanese imperialists completely seized all the forests of Korea under the cloak of classifying the ownership of forests and investigating, confirming and registering their economic conditions and turned them into the “state-owned” ones at will to plunder them. After the survey, they took preferential measures for them to cut down many forests.

The area of the forests seized by the Japanese imperialists under the pretext of “state-owned forests” amounted to 13 million hectares out of the 16 million hectares of the country’s total forest lands. The rest were owned by some Japanese and their stooges. 

In order to plunder the inland resources including the vast primeval forests in the area of the Paektu Plateau, in particular, they built the railway between Kilju and Hyesan in the mid-1930s and the one between Paegam and Musan from the late 1930s to the early 1940s to plunder the forest resources on a large scale.

Just before their defeat in the war, they set fire to forests in different parts of the country and burned many forests. 

Owing to their plundering of forest resources, the natural environment of the country was completely destroyed and the Korean people suffered severe natural disasters.

Japan should bear responsibility for this and pay appropriate reparations.

The historical fact can never be covered up even with the passage of time and it should be settled without fail.