In 1905 Japan fabricated the Ulsa Five-point Treaty in a bid to establish colonial domination over Korea.

Entering the 20th century, it began in real earnest to fulfil its long-held ambition to colonize Korea.

The Japanese imperialists forced Emperor Kojong of Korea to accept their draft treaty unconditionally, threatening that he would be far from safe, if he rejected their demand. But Kojong and his feudal government flatly turned it down.

Concluding that they could not attain their aim by means of threat and blackmail alone, they, on November 17, had their huge troops besiege the royal palace in two or three rings and broke into the palace to force Kojong to sign the treaty. They forcibly gathered cabinet ministers of Korea and had the seal of the foreign minister they had stolen put on the treaty.

As a result, the aggressive and deceptive Ulsa Five-point Treaty was concocted and Korea was reduced to a colony of Japan. In January 1906 Kojong sent a letter to heads of several foreign countries, in which he said that he had not admitted the treaty invented by the Japanese envoy and the Korean foreign minister from the first time and nor had he affixed the seal of state to it. In June the following year he dispatched emissaries to the Second International Peace Conference held in The Hague of the Netherlands to disclose the illegality of the treaty.

A report submitted to the UN International Law Commission in 1963 referred to the Ulsa Five-point Treaty as one of the invalid treaties that had been concluded at the point of the bayonet.

Japan placed Korea under its military occupation for four decades on the pretext of the treaty. Throughout their occupation the Japanese enforced the most barbaric colonial fascist rule in Korea and subjected the local people to untold miseries and sufferings.

They kidnapped or drafted more than 8.4 million Korean young and middle-aged men for forced labour and conscription. In addition, they kidnapped, abducted and forcibly took away as many as 200 000 Korean women to use them as sex slaves for their army, and killed most of them in a merciless manner.

They tried hard to strip the Koreans of their language and even names, and destructed and plundered a wealth of cultural heritage and natural resources.

Notwithstanding this, Japan has so far denied the unprecedented crimes it committed against the Korean people, far from making apology to them for their wrongdoings. It rather goes to great lengths to try to distort its past history.

Its shameless behaviour causes surging censure among the Korean people who are firmly determined to settle accounts with it.

An Song Ho