KCNA Commentary Urges Japan to Make Thorough Reparation for Its Past Crimes

Pyongyang, April 2 (KCNA) -- Shortly ago, the UK officially returned to Ethiopia a relic it plundered in the last century.
Hailing the humble liquidation of past crimes, big or small, the international community again weighs Japan against Germany over the issue of liquidation.
Germany and Japan are war criminal states that inflicted untold misfortune and catastrophe upon mankind by igniting the Second World War and the Pacific War. After the wars, they committed themselves not to repeat the crimes before the international community.
More than seven decades have passed, but the international community has seen Germany and Japan with diametrically different records of performance.
Germany enacted a "federal law on compensation for the victims of Nazis" and has made systematic reparations for relevant countries, organizations and people in the wake of the Second World War.
On June 12, 2007, the "memory, responsibility and future fund" of Germany declared the completion of 7 years-long reparation to the victims of conscript labor forced by Nazis during the Second World War. Germany had paid nearly 64 billion € in total to fulfill all its reparations for the Second World War.
It also wound up making reparations for the First World War several years ago.
Its efforts considerably improved its international image and carried more weight in the international community.
Quite contrary to it, Japan has totally denied its past crimes.
After the war, it set it as a target of its policy to turn itself into a military giant and has worked hard to build the "Self-Defence Forces" into the one for overseas aggression, claiming that "its defeat in the Pacific War was attributable to its weak power".
Now, Japan has nearly 230 000 soldiers on active service and strengthened the maritime SDF to be capable of carrying out the strategy of "attack on ocean".
Japan swallowed up a lot of countries in the Asia-Pacific, forcibly drafted 200 000 Korean women and more than 8.4 million Korean people to battlefields and slave labor sites and killed more than one million Korean people in the past. Without making an admission, apology and reparation for its past crimes, it is on fire with anachronistic sanctions against the DPRK, committing double or treble crimes against the Korean nation.
Therefore, it is quite natural for the international community to be enraged with Japan for seeking a permanent membership of the UNSC whose mission is to preserve global peace and security.
If Japan fails to feel ashamed of its past crimes, it can never be trusted by the international community.
The priority facing the present Japanese politicians is to liquidate the past.