University students stage a flash-mob protest calling for Japan's apology over forced conscription of Koreans during the 1910-45 Japanese occupation, in Seodaemun-gu, Seoul, Wednesday, a day before the 74th anniversary of the National Liberation Day of Korea. Yonhap
Pyongyang also condemns Tokyo's "retaliatory" trade restrictions on Seoul
By Jung Da-min
North Korea's state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) Thursday condemned Tokyo for evading responsibility for its use of Korean forced laborers during the 1910-45 Japanese occupation. The article came as the two Koreas were commemorating the 74th anniversary of National Liberation Day.
"We cannot but emphasize the Japanese imperialists dragged about 8,400,000 Korean young and middle-aged people to the sites of the war for overseas aggression and hard-work sites in order to invade the continent, compelled 200,000 Korean women to suffer the miserable fate as sexual slaves for the Imperial Japanese Army and mercilessly killed more than one million people," read the statement by a spokesperson for the Association of Korean Victims of Forcible Drafting and Their Bereaved Families, based in Pyongyang. But the number of the victims referenced remains controversial.
"The Japanese government is leaving no means untried to evade responsibility for the settlement of its past, far from sincerely admitting all the crimes committed by Japan against the people of Korea and reflecting on them."
The issue of Japan's wartime crimes against Koreans is still a thorny issue for Tokyo to engage in North Korea's denuclearization dialogue as the North has been pursuing the "Japan passing" strategy since the beginning, refusing to meet Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and calling for Tokyo to properly apologize and offer compensation.