history

During their military occupation of Korea between 1905 and 1945, the Japanese imperialists were hell-bent on suppressing and slaughtering the Korean people in the Jiandao area of China as well.

At the time, many Koreans lived in the area and they shared strong anti-Japanese sentiment.

Terribly upset by this, the Japanese imperialists hatched a scheme to nip it in the bud and massacre the Korean people.

In October 1920, the Japanese imperialists bribed a boss of mounted bandits to attack Hunchun. As their consulate in it was burnt down by the attack, the Japanese denounced it as that of the Korean Independence Army units and took advantage of this opportunity to launch a “large-scale punitive operation” in the Jiandao area on the pretext of “protecting the lives and property” of their residents in the area.

They massed troops in the area including a regiment of the 19th Division stationed in Korea, the police force in South Hamgyong Province, the expeditionary force to Siberia and the Manchurian Railway garrison. The targets of their attack were not any military facilities or armed groups, but innocent Koreans and their villages.

They declared the three-point policy of killing everyone, burning everything and plundering everything, rushed everywhere the Koreans lived and mercilessly killed them irrespective of sex and age. They gouged out the eyes of live people and skinned them, cut off their limbs and buried them alive by dozens. The brutes also passed ropes through their noses or disembowelled them, tied their arms and legs and chopped them. And they even threw children into burning houses.

In a village of Yanji County alone they killed 255 of 300 villagers by way of skinning their faces and throwing them into fire.

In such ways they slaughtered over 30 000 Koreans and burnt down more than 6 000 houses in the course of the “large-scale punitive operation”.

A foreigner, who witnessed the brutal atrocities on the spot, wrote in his book: “They took out all the residents including aged persons and children and beat them to death, and threw live persons into burning houses or ash heaps to burn them to death. … Many corpses were found in the heaps of burnt ashes. When I dragged out a corpse from an ash heap, there were chopped hands and feet scattered around. I collected them together and took a photo. I was so nervous that my hands trembled. So I had to take a photo of them four times.” 

After committing such appalling atrocities, the Japanese imperialists claimed victory and drank a “toast” to it, officially commending the brutes of the "punitive force" who had been mobilized in the human butchering.

The Japanese authorities still try in every way to embellish the heinous crimes Japan had committed in the past century without feeling guilty about or responsibility for them even a little.

It is the firm will of the Korean people to finally settle accounts with Japan for the past crimes which can neither be erased nor covered up even if time passes and generations change.