Association of Korean Victims of Forcible Drafting and Their Bereaved Families Issues Statement

Pyongyang, September 2 (KCNA) -- A spokesman for the Association of Korean Victims of Forcible Drafting and Their Bereaved Families issued a press statement with the lapse of 98 years since the Japanese imperialists perpetrated the shuddering massacre of Koreans in Japan occasioned by a great earthquake that jolted the Kanto area.

At noon on September 1, 1923, a strong earthquake which shook Tokyo and its surrounding areas accompanied by widespread fires destroyed hundreds of thousands of houses and buildings and took lives of a great number of people, the press statement said, and went on:

To stop rapidly spreading social uneasiness and horror and to calm down confusion and discontent of the afflicted people, the cunning Japanese imperialists hatched a vicious plot to sacrifice innocent and bare-handed Koreans in Japan.

The Japanese imperialists cooked up the "story of Koreans' rioting" and spread rumors that "Koreans set fire and put poison in water wells". They massacred more than 23 000 Koreans in Japan in the most barbarous way in a little over ten days, with the involvement of the army, police and ultra-right organizations.

The massacre of Koreans in Japan committed during the great Kanto quake proves that the Japanese imperialists are ogres steeped in misanthropy and national chauvinism to the marrow of their bones and blood-suckers and sworn enemies of the Korean people.

Almost a century has passed since then, but the Japanese authorities do not feel even an iota of guilty conscience or responsibility, much less clarifying the truth about it.

They are busy denying or covering up the past crimes and inciting extreme national chauvinism in the Japanese society through a smear campaign against the DPRK.

They are now trying every possible attempt to get the right-wing reactionaries to disrupt memorial services for the Korean victims and even remove a memorial monument.

We strongly denounce in the name of all the past victims and the bereaved families the reckless acts of the Japanese authorities and the right-wing reactionaries getting hell-bent on the anachronistic moves for distorting history and opposing the DPRK and the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan, far from making an apology and reflection on the massacre.

We will never forget the barbarous acts of the Japanese imperialists during the great Kanto quake and will certainly force them to pay a thousand-fold no matter how much water may flow under the bridge. -0-