Japan Should Draw Lesson from Its Defeat in War: KCNA Commentary

Pyongyang, July 15 (KCNA) -- Secrets about the Korean war are revealed one after another even today seeing the passage of 70 years since the outbreak of the war.

Recently, Kyoto Shimbun of Japan quoted a Japanese in his nineties as testifying that he had been involved in the transport of war supplies including U.S. tanks during the war.

According to him, the Japanese government had conscripted even civilians into bringing war supplies to the Korean peninsula since the outbreak of war and issued a strict gagging order to prevent them from telling the truth.

It is well known that Japan was actively involved in the Korean War, pursuant to the U.S. policy of aggression.

Japan offered its whole territory to the U.S. imperialist aggressor forces as their logistic, sortie and supply bases as soon as the war broke out, and mobilized all its power to provide human and material resources to the U.S. Its government drafted ex-soldiers of the "imperial army" and many other people into military units such as "volunteer corps", "militiamen" and "ambulance corps". Those draftees were directly involved in reconnaissance, scouting and mine-sweeping operations, air raids, medical treatment and other missions at the Korean war front. They even participated in the U.S. imperialists' germ warfare.

Japan found itself in the war of aggression again less than five years after its defeat in the Second World War. This was a flagrant violation of the international convention depriving Japan of the right to possess its fighting capability, the right of belligerency and the right to participate in a war and of its constitution specifying the exclusive defense. It was, at the same time, a provocation to mankind desirous of peace.

Japan has refused to open to the public the truth behind its involvement in the war and to admit it, for fear of the international community's condemnation. On the contrary, it seeks to bury in oblivion of history the crimes it committed by taking part in the Korean War more actively than any others.

Now that Japan persists in pursuing the hostile policy towards the DPRK, desperately seeking to realize its wild ambition for reinvading Korea, the true colors of the island reactionaries as criminals stand out in bolder relief.

Declassified in 2001 was a U.S. forces' confidential document, which discloses that Japanese high-ranking officials submitted petitions to the command of MacArthur several times so as to ask the U.S. to provide the Korean Peninsula to Japan as a colony again in return for Japan's dispatch of support troops during the Korean war.

It was also revealed through a diplomatic document declassified by the Japanese foreign ministry that in 1969 Prime Minister Sato volunteered logistic support for the U.S. in case of "emergency" in the Korean Peninsula.

Last year, the "UN Command" came under strong protest and scathing condemnation for trying to include Japan on the list of countries which would render military assistance in the said "emergency".

All facts show clearly that Japan has a criminal intention to reinvade Korea.

The sworn enemy Japan would be well-advised to always remember its defeats in all the wars of aggression against Korea.

The Korean people will make Japan pay dearly for its heinous crimes without fail. -0-