After their military occupation of Korea in the last century, the Japanese imperialists enforced the heinous governor-general rule over it.

The Japanese imperialists fabricated the "annexation treaty" in August 1910 and began to impose governor-general rule on October 1 that year with a view to consolidating their colonial rule.

The governor-general of Korea, a post to which only Japanese army generals and navy admirals could be appointed, had unlimited power–administratively, legislatively, judicially and militarily. Terauchi, the first governor-general of Korea, said that "Koreans should obey the Japanese law or die”.

In order to impose governor-general rule, the Japanese imperialists reorganized the residency-general set up in 1906 into the government-general in Korea.

The Government-General in Korea fabricated and promulgated the “summary execution act” and the “criminal act in Korea” to politically dominate and oppress the Korean people and proclaimed the “land survey act”, the “law on fisheries” and the “ordinance on mining in Korea” to dominate the economic mainstays of Korea and rob it of many of its natural resources.

Especially, they resorted to every possible means and method to suppress the anti-Japanese feelings of the Korean people.

The number of arrests committed by the Japanese imperialists increased over ten times more in 1918 than that in 1912.

The pent-up grudge and wrath of the Korean people under the colonial rule of the Japanese imperialists exploded into an anti-Japanese popular uprising on March 1 1919.

Taken aback by this, the Japanese imperialists mercilessly killed the demonstrators by mobilizing their army and police.

From March 1 to May 31 over 7 500 Koreans were killed, more than 15 900 wounded and some 46 900 arrested and imprisoned.

Realizing through the March First Popular Uprising that they could not suppress the strong anti-Japanese spirit of the Korean people only by force of arms, the Japanese imperialists began to impose oppressive rule in a more cunning way under the cloak of “civil government” in August 1919.

The crimes committed by the Japanese imperialists through the governor-general rule are merely part of the crimes they committed during their 40-odd-year-long colonial rule over Korea.

More than a century has passed since then.

Japan, however, has not yet made a sincere apology and reparations for its past crimes but more openly persists in its hostile moves against the DPRK.

Last August, 80 years since the defeat of the Japanese imperialists along with the end of the Second World War, Japanese politicians visited the Yasukuni Shrine housing the name tablets of the war criminals to make offerings there. Recently they have been further set on adventurous and reckless military moves.

Japan, which tries to repeat the wrong past instead of drawing a lesson from it, will have to pay dearly for it.