Pyongyang, June 16 (KCNA) -- The director of the Institute for Japan Studies under the DPRK Foreign Ministry on Sunday issued the following press statement titled "It is the moral responsibility and international legal obligation of Japan, a war criminal state, to face up to the history and liquidate its past":

80 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, 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 seeing the 80 years after 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 wrote finis to the "diplomacy of apology" with the Abe's press statement issued after 70 years of the war.

What should not be overlooked is that the present Japanese prime minister 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 a verification of 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 military's individual action and the circumstances that the military caused civilian damage at the reckless war.

In particular, the prime minister said at the Diet's discussion on the issue of the press statement some days ago 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 is 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 specious words like "war review" and "achievements as a peaceful state", while talking about the "termination of the diplomacy of apology". This is an unpardonable mockery and insult upon the peoples of the DPRK and other Asian countries that 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 resorting to 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 settlement of its past.

The 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,.

However much water has flowed under the bridge, the Korean people clearly remember the thrice-cursed past crimes committed by the Japanese imperialists against Korea, which inflicted huge human, material, mental and cultural damage on it while perpetrating the barbarous colonial fascist rule for over 40 years after occupying it 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 forcibly abducting them and mercilessly trampled down the youth of 200 000 women by reducing them into sexual slaves of the Japanese army. Those were hideous unethical crimes unprecedented in history.

The Japanese imperialists had made desperate efforts to eliminate the family name, surname, language and words of the Korean nation with the time-honored history spanning thousands of years and brilliant culture on the earth 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 to destroy and plunder the precious cultural assets and rich natural resources of Korea at random.

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

A Japanese media once said that if the documents accusing the criminal acts committed by the Japanese imperialists in Korea and other Asian countries were piled up, they are as much as 20 000 meters high. And the data on the germ warfare of the notorious 731 unit and other powerful evidence that are still being found disclose the crimes against humanity committed by the Japanese imperialists, brutes in human skin.

History cannot be erased by ink, burned by fire, or torn by sword.

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

It is the unavoidable moral responsibility of Japan, the war criminal state, and its duty before international law to face up to the history and liquidate its past with the 80th anniversary of the Japanese imperialists' defeat in the war as a turning point. -0-

www.kcna.kp (2025.06.16.)