On June 15, the director of the Institute for Japan Studies under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) issued the following press statement titled “It is the inevitable moral responsibility and international legal obligation of the war criminal state of Japan to face up to the history and liquidate its past”:

Eighty years have passed since the Japanese imperialists, who had stained the continent of Asia with blood and imposed unprecedented misfortune upon the peoples of the regional countries, knelt down and declared their unconditional surrender.

According to recent media reports, there are conflicting opinions in Japan on the issue of making public the prime minister’s press statement over the past war of aggression on the day marking the 80 th anniversary of the defeat of the Japanese imperialism.

Conscientious organizations and personages are demanding that the government clearly clarifies its stand on apology at an important historical point and, on the other hand, the ultra-right conservative politicians are quibbling that Japan already put a full stop to the “diplomacy of apology” with Abe’s press statement which was issued 70 years after the war.

What should not be overlooked is the fact that the present prime minister of Japan is taking a confused attitude in this regard and is trying to patch up by making public his personal opinion through the review of the Second World War.

The “war review” to be conducted by Japan is not an investigation into the aggressive war crimes committed in the past but an extremely inessential and confused one like the institutional issue that the government failed to prevent the unchecked action of the military authorities and the explanation of the circumstances where the military caused civilian damage at the reckless war.

In particular, the prime minister said some days ago at the Diet’s discussion on the issue of the press statement that the civilian control method, in which the “officer of the Self-Defense Forces” is not allowed to appear in the Diet under the present constitutional law, should be called to account. His remarks reveal the sinister scheme to pave the way for the legalization of the “Self-Defense Forces” with the “war review”.

In front of the international community, Japan is trying to pass the 80 years of its defeat with such specious words as “war review” and “achievements as a peaceful state”, while talking about the “termination of the diplomacy of apology”. This is an unpardonable mockery of and insult to the peoples of the DPRK and other Asian countries who are suffering from the hideous crimes of the Japanese imperialists and an open provocation to the international justice and conscience.

The history has recorded many war criminal states which had mercilessly destroyed the peace and civilization of mankind by seeking pleasure in aggression against other countries and nations, but it is only Japan which is subject to international criticism due to its persistent distortion of history and evasion of liquidation of its past.

Abe’s press statement, which the right-wing conservative forces of Japan are trying to regard as a “review of the past history of aggression”, is run through with shameless sophisms that the next generation should not be allowed to suffer the same fate of making an apology and there is no more apology for the history of aggression, far from making a frank and sincere apology for the past crimes.

Years passed and a new century has set in. However, Korean people clearly remember the nefarious past crimes committed by the Japanese imperialists against them, the crimes that inflicted huge human, material, mental and cultural damage upon them, while perpetrating the barbarous colonial fascist rule for over 40 years after the occupation of Korea with arms.

The Japanese imperialists brutally massacred more than one million Koreans, hurled more than 8.4 million young and middle-aged people into battle sites of aggression and slave labour sites by abducting them and mercilessly trampled down the youth of 200 000 Korean women by reducing them into sexual slaves of the Japanese army. Those were hideously unethical crimes unprecedented in history.

The Japanese imperialists had made desperate efforts to wipe the Korean nation off the face of the earth by eliminating the family names, given names, and even the speech and written language of Korea, the nation with the brilliant culture and time-honored history spanning thousands of years while asserting that “the Japanese and the Korean are of the same ancestry” and “Japan and Korea are one community “. It is none other than the Japanese imperialists that destroyed and plundered any precious cultural assets and rich natural resources of Korea within their reach.

For the past 80 years since its defeat, Japan has seriously threatened the sovereignty, rights to development and rights to existence of the DPRK while persistently refusing to make an apology and reparation for its crimes against Korean people and pursuing its hostile policy towards the DPRK. It has committed more crimes by encroaching upon the national rights of the Koreans in Japan, the very descendants of the Korean victims of forcible drafting.

Japanese media once reported that if the documents accusing of the criminal acts committed by the Japanese imperialists in Korea and other Asian countries were piled up, the pile would be as much as 20 000 meters high. And the data on the germ warfare of the notorious Unit 731 and other powerful evidence that are still being uncovered disclose the crimes against humanity committed by the Japanese imperialists, the brutes in human shape.

History cannot be erased by ink, burned by fire, nor torn by sword.

The history of the aggressors and the war criminal state remains forever though Japan desperately tries to erase its past crimes with all sorts of trickeries and evade its responsibility, and no statute of limitations is applicable even after 80 or 800 years.

It is the unavoidable moral responsibility and obligations by the international law of the war criminal state of Japan to face up to the history and liquidate its past with the watershed of 80 th anniversary of the Japanese imperialists’ defeat in the war, where the bloody records of the Japanese imperialism come into the spotlight.