opinion

The Japanese authorities’ national chauvinism is well known to the world.

This can be proved by the fact that they recently excluded Korean schools from the objects of the “tuition-free programmes for senior high schools”.

The Japan-Korea solidarity national network, a civic organization, and Wada Haruki, emeritus professor at Tokyo University, and other progressive intellectuals in Japan denounced the Japanese authorities’ inhumane policy of excluding Korean schools from the objects of the “tuition-free programmes for senior high schools”, saying that the students of Korean schools have suffered discrimination in the Japanese government's educational policy, though they are infallible in relation to political issues.

Korean schools are those which give education to the descendants of the Koreans who were forcibly taken to Japan to be forced into slavery and death during the Japanese imperialists' vicious colonial fascist rule over Korea in the past.

If the Japanese authorities have a shred of conscience, they should provide the Korean students in Japan with the right to and conditions for democratic national education from the viewpoint of remorse for their past wrongdoing and from a moral sense.

Clear is the aim pursued by the Japanese authorities who are resorting to discrimination against the Korean nation, obsessed with extreme hostility toward the DPRK and national chauvinism.

It is self-evident that if Korean schools are excluded from the objects of the “tuition-free programmes for senior high schools”, the families of the schools’ students will bear heavy financial burden. The Japanese authorities are trying to impose financial burden on Koreans in Japan and thus make them feel a sense of psychological oppression and to emasculate the national pride and self-esteem of Japan-based Korean students who are in the formative period of having outlook on the world. Furthermore, they are trying to separate the students from Chongryon (General Association of Korean Residents in Japan) and prevent them from learning the Korean language and history, so as to obliterate the national identity of Koreans in Japan.

It is sheer folly.

Japan is committing another crime against the Korean people.

The Korean people’s resentment against the Japanese authorities, who are attempting to stamp out national education of Chongryon while resorting to the policy hostile toward the DPRK instead of making an apology and reparations for their past crimes committed against the Korean people, has reached an extreme. The Japanese authorities will have to pay dearly for their behaviour.