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During their military occupation of Korea in the last century (1905-1945), the Japanese imperialists cooked up all sorts of draconian laws to ruthlessly suppress and eliminate the independence movement of the Korean people.

As the anti-Japanese struggle of the Koreans further intensified in the mid-1930s, they enacted and announced the “law on probation of Korean political offenders” as “decree” No. 16 to watch, control and oppress Korean communists, patriots and fighters for independence.

The law, which was enforced from December 1936, was a retrogressively revised version of the “law on probation of political offenders” which had already been in force in Japan.

It stipulated that the reprieved violators of the “law on maintenance of public order”, the persons exempted from indictment and those who served their sentences or were on parole shall be defined as objects of “probation”, their freedom of action including residence, social intercourse and communication shall be restricted and their every movement shall constantly be watched and controlled.

Based on the law, Japan set up a “political offender probation office” in Pyongyang, Hamhung, Chongjin, Sinuiju and other major cities to frequently bring there the objects of “probation” in an attempt to force them to be an “imperial subject”.

In February 1941, it introduced the “law on preventive detention of Korean political offenders”, a harsher one than the probation law, to further intensify the suppression of the objects of “probation” and enforce a “preventive detention” system. The system was a so-called “preventive measure” for detaining those who were considered dangerous even though they did not commit any crime.

By using it, the Japanese arrested and detained at random and cruelly suppressed and executed not only blacklisted and insubordinate patriots but all other Koreans incurring their displeasure.

Numerous Koreans fell victim to the “law on probation of Korean political offenders” and other unjust laws of Japan.

Japan’s crimes are vividly recorded in history and the Korean people will settle accounts with it without fail.