A spokesman for the Korean Committee on Measures for the Sexual Slavery for Japanese Army and Drafting Victims Monday made public a statement in this regard.

The Japanese imperialists deceived international community with the false "treaty" and imposed great human, material and spiritual damage upon the Korean people for more than four decades, oppressing the Korean nation with arms.

What matters is that Japan has not made any apology and reparation for these huge crimes until now seven decades after its defeat.

Far from feeling responsibility for the crimes, Japan is justifying its occupation of Korea with such sophism that its colonial rule over Korea was wanted by Koreans and that Japan made contribution to the development of Korea. It is also shamelessly embellishing its inhuman crimes by branding the young and middle-aged Korean men who were drafted as "volunteers" and the victims of the sexual slavery for the Imperial Japanese Army as "victims of flesh traffic".

It is only Japan in the world which has not liquidated its past even seven decades after its defeat.

The Korean nation is no longer a lesser nation that suffered twists and turns in distress amid the scramble of big powers for influence in the past and the present times is not the old era when Japan deprived a country of its sovereignty with a sheet of paper.

Moreover, liquidation of the past is not a matter that Japan can gloss over by evading the responsibility for the past crimes committed against the Korean people.

Japan would be well advised to make a bold decision for the settlement of the past as early as possible, bearing in mind that the proper settlement of the past crimes against the Korean people is an inevitable legitimate and state responsibility and the very thing for the sake of Japan itself.