Recorded in the Japanese imperialists’ history of aggression against Korea are the crimes of plundering Korea of its resources by relying on its vicious predatory colonial system and oppression. Among them is its plunder of Korea’s underground resources.

The Japanese imperialists, who worked out a policy of plundering its underground resources on a large scale in the initial days of their occupation of the country, proclaimed the “Korean Mining Act” in December 1915 as part of their bid to implement it.

The act stipulated it as a principle to allow the one who applied for the mining right first, except for a specific area or minerals. Based on their “survey data of mineral deposits”, the Japanese informed their capitalists of the promising fields and important minerals in advance and let them apply earlier than others, thus enabling them to monopolize the mining rights in the major mining areas.

It also specified that foreigners, other than Japanese, cannot newly have mining rights while attaching the condition that the mining rights are granted only to companies corporate. Consequently, the national capitalists of Korea, whose establishment of companies was already restricted due to the “company act” announced by the Japanese imperialists, could not have the right to manage mines.

In addition, it defined that the mining rights already owned remained valid even if a new law was enforced, thereby legally guaranteeing the ownership of the mining rights which the Japanese capitalists had seized already. And it granted the Japanese capitalists the authority to dispose of the land in the relevant development areas at will.

After creating favourable conditions for its capital’s penetration into Korea through the act, Japan plundered Korea’s underground resources on a large scale on this basis.

Only the gold plundered by Japan during its occupation of Korea amounted to 400 tons.

In order to address iron shortage caused by the expansion of the war of aggression, it also produced iron on the spot and transported it instead of massively shipping away iron ore. In this way, Japan took away nine million tons of pig iron and steel from Korea in 1944 alone.

It also shipped away en masse such minerals as coal, lead, zinc, copper, nickel, magnesite, manganese and graphite. In particular, it granted a privilege to the Korean Magnesium Metal Co, Ltd, the Japanese Magnesite Chemical Industries Co, Ltd and others to plunder large quantities of high-grade magnesium. Such plunder increased from 2 410 tons to more than 157 740 tons between 1935 and 1944.

Japan forced the Koreans into slave labour as it used their labour for the plunder of natural resources of Korea. The hard work for more than ten hours a day and poor labour safety conditions caused accidents at any time and the lack of sleep threatened the lives of people every minute and killed a lot.

The Korean people will never forget the outrageous atrocities committed by Japan, but make it pay dearly for them.