Spokesman for DPRK FM on Japan-S. Korea Summit

 Pyongyang, November 5 (KCNA) -- A spokesman for the DPRK Foreign Ministry Thursday gave the following answer to the question put by KCNA as regards the decision of Japan and south Korea to make efforts to seek an early solution to the issue of "comfort women for the Imperial Japanese Army."
    It was reported that the Japan-south Korea summit held in Seoul early in November decided to accelerate the discussion on seeking an early solution to the said issue.
    As the whole world knows, the sexual slavery for the Imperial Japanese Army committed by the state of Japan in an organized manner in the period of the Japanese imperialists' occupation of Korea and during World War II is one of the crimes which Japan should redress without fail as it is the most hideous human rights abuses to which no statute of limitations is applicable because it savagely violated the dignity, virginity and physical bodies of women.
    In the period of Japan's occupation of Korea for over 40 years in the last century Japan forcibly drafted at least 8.4 million Koreans, massacred more than one million, forced 200 000 Korean women into sexual slaves, forced Koreans to change their names into Japanese ones and committed such unheard-of monstrous crimes as conducting tests on living bodies. It, however, shunned redemption of those crimes though seven decades have passed since its defeat in the war.
    The most cruel and despicable crimes are not such things that allow the assailant to deal with them with one victimized party only out of the victims to gloss over them.
    This issue can hardly find a final solution unless the damage suffered by all Koreans is redressed throughout Korea because there are victims of the sexual slavery for the Imperial Japanese Army not only in the south of Korea but also in the north.
    Japan should admit the state responsibility for all hideous crimes committed against the Korean people including the sexual slavery for the Imperial Japanese Army and the damage done by them and make reparation for them in such a manner as to be understandable to all Koreans. -0-