On March 1, 1919, the Japanese imperialists brutally killed Koreans who turned out in a peaceful demonstration in protest against the colonial rule and in demand of the independence of the country.

They massacred more than 100,000 Koreans during the uprising, the statement said, and went on:

There were many cases of mass killing including the cases of the March First Popular Uprising, the great Kanto quake and Ukishima-maru sinking by explosion and forcible drafting, forced labor and sexual slavery for the Imperial Japanese Army. However, Japan has neither made any sincere apology for the crimes committed by it against Koreans in the past nor probed the truth behind those crimes.

In recent years alone, the Japanese chief executive blustered that there is no evidence proving that the Imperial Japanese Army forcibly drafted women as comfort women. In January this year the new president of NHK justified the shuddering sexual slavery, claiming that there were comfort women in any country which fought a war.

A hundred and dozens of politicians thronged to the Yasukuni Shrine to honor the memory of those war criminals who imposed horrible disasters upon the Korean people and others in Asia. They even let loose absurd sophism that there is still no clear definition about aggression worldwide, stunning the international community.

What is happening in Japan reminds people of its real picture in those days before its defeat when it frantically rode on a chariot of imperialism, advertising its war of aggression as a "war of justice" obsessed with the daydream of "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere".

Japan should never forget that if it lends no ear to the voices of justice, persisting in its anachronistic moves to evade the settlement of its past crimes and distort history, it will throw itself and people into the abyss of ruin again.

Japan had better drop its wrong view on history and way of thinking, though belatedly, and opt for honestly paying for all losses and sufferings it brought to Korea and its people and other peoples of Asia.