January 17, 2026Jan 17, 2026
KCNA Pyongyang Times

The world of difference in facing up to the past

Date: 22/05/2020 | Source: Pyongyang Times | Read original version at source

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said that memory never fades away and we cannot get rid of our past and that it is not a shame to admit the responsibility but to deny it at a wreath-laying ceremony held in Berlin in commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the end of the Second World War on May 8.

Some 80 years ago, Nazi Germany started World War II plunging about 80 percent of the world population into the ravages of war. During the war, many people lost their lives or became crippled for life. Since then, Germany has made compensation for the damage to the victims of the war in several stages in its efforts to atone for its wrongdoings as a war criminal state. Such a high-minded behaviour of Germany which admits and apologizes for the evil doings of the past even today arouses sympathy of the international community.

However, in sharp contrast to that, there is one brazen-faced country which does neither compensate nor even apologize for its bloodstained past, but rather praises it and whets the sword for revenge.

It is none other than Japan that had inflicted enormous damage on the Asian peoples, clamouring for the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere.

It had spotted Korea as an outpost and supply base for invading the Asian continent well over a hundred years ago and occupied the country by force of arms in the early 20th century and sucked the blood of the Korean people for over 40 years.

It also occupied a large part of the continent including China and killed lots of innocent people and even committed such a heinous unethical crime of robbing invaluable cultural heritage elements and assets.

It is the height of moral baseness and impudence that Japan persistently denies such heinous crimes, evades the responsibility for liquidating the past and tries to realize its old pipedream.

Japanese Prime Minister Abe in his New Year message for this year stressed the need for constitutional revision to specify the existence of the Self-Defence Forces and on April 21 presented an offering to the Yasukuni Shrine, the spiritual symbol of militarism, together with high-ranking officials as part of the spring sacrificial rite.

Japan rebuilt the “territory and sovereignty exhibition hall”, which stores documents justifying its wild territorial ambition, in a scale seven times that of the previous one and is building up the capacity of the Self-Defence Forces, ruffling the feathers of neighbouring countries.

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