opinion

Another piece of data proving the massacre of Koreans committed by the Japanese imperialists at the time of the great Kanto earthquake was recently discovered in Japan.

On December 25 last year Mainichi Shimbun reported in an article that a document on the fact-finding survey conducted by the then Japanese ministry of the army in November 1923 when the great quake occurred was discovered in the historical data room of the defense institute under the Japanese defense ministry.

According to the document, more than 40 Koreans, who were being escorted to the police station, were all killed by bloodthirsty mobs in different parts of the present city of Kumagaya. The document described the incident as "killing of Koreans", "disgraceful event" and "illegal act" and said that "Koreans did neither make an attack nor set fire and we did not hear that poison was thrown into wells".

It is a stark historical fact recognized at home and abroad that the massacre of Koreans in Kanto was the thrice-cursed national chauvinistic atrocity Japan committed in an organized and planned way by invoking its state power. At that time, the Japanese government and military spread the groundless rumours that "Koreans are raising a riot and poisoning wells" in a planned and organized way, and by taking advantage of this, the Japanese committed unprecedented massacres of Koreans in different parts of the country.

The recently disclosed document clearly proves that the contents of the rumours, part of the reasons of the massacre, did not actually happen.

The document was reportedly written by an adjutant at the ministry of the army on November 2 1923 after receiving a notice which ordered all units related to the great Kanto earthquake to report on the contents of the survey by November 25 that year.

This brought to light the hypocritical act of the Japanese government which has obstinately denied the massacre, talking about "records".

Last year there took place a variety of events in succession to the memory of the Korean victims as it was 100 years since the great quake. The Japanese people from all walks of life are more strongly demanding than ever that the government admit the state responsibility for the massacre and make an apology. There have successively been discovered the data revealing that the massacre of Koreans occurred during the quake, but the Japanese government is concealing and distorting even the historical facts, far from making an apology and reparation for it.

On August 30 last year, a few days before 100 years after the quake, Matsuno, the then chief of the Cabinet Secretariat of Japan, answered a question about the massacre of Koreans at a press conference that he could not find within the government a record by which to grasp the truth.

Unreasonable and discriminative words, violence and crimes aimed at shunning people of specific nations or nationalities cannot be tolerated in any society, he said, and added that they were pushing ahead with the counteraction to eliminate discrimination against foreigners through SNS.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Kishida at a meeting of the Budget Committee of the House of Councillors on November 29 avoided detailed mention of the fact related to the massacre of Koreans.

This is an intolerable insult to the victims and their bereaved families and a shameless attempt to evade the state responsibility for the hideous inhuman crime.

The atmosphere of hostility toward the DPRK prevails throughout Japanese society and the DPRK-Japan relations are getting worse day by day. This is not unrelated to the fact that the rulers who have no sense of guilt over the past crimes and are devoid of elementary ethics and morality hold the backbone of power.

Japan is making desperate attempts to erase its bloodstained past history. This is a clear proof that it intends to make the history of aggression repeat.

The past crimes can be neither concealed nor erased.

The truth of history can never be concealed by any desperate bid to deny the record of crimes and Japan can never evade the responsibility for them.