Opinion

It is 113 years since the "Korea-Japan annexation treaty" was fabricated on August 22 1910.

The Japanese authorities are engrossed in the moves to distort history as they embellish the past crimes, far from making a sincere apology and reparation for the crime of having occupied a country, though over a century has passed since then.

At that time, the Japanese imperialists reduced Korea to their complete colony by cooking up the treaty.

Japan had long attempted to turn Korea into its colony.

In July 1909, it drew up a document on confirming the policy towards Korea, which specified the method of fully occupying Korea and the mode of colonial rule after occupation.

In the document, it decided to dispatch more troops and military and other police forces to Korea in order to “annex Korea at an opportune time” and “build up Japan’s real ability” there.

The document also said that Japan would enforce colonial rule over Korea by relying on its actual ability, i.e. by force, thoroughly “Japanize” Korea to deter other countries from attacking and occupying the country and seize its key economic lifelines including railways while intensifying political oppression.

Japan appointed Terauchi, a wicked man with a military background, as resident-general of Korea on May 30 1910 to assign him the task of occupying the country.

As the resident-general of Korea, he took a large number of additional military police into Korea and fully usurped its police authority.

As the last process for occupying Korea, Japan brought into Hansong its aggressor forces it had hurled into the "punitive operations” against the anti-Japanese Righteous Volunteers’ units.

The Japanese aggressor forces placed Hansong under martial law in collaboration with military and other police forces.

The "Korea-Japan annexation treaty" was made thus under such harsh military repression.

In 2009 it was disclosed that the Korean and Japanese texts of the treaty had been written by the same handwriting and in 2010 it was also revealed that all the four documents were written by one person, including the “royal instruction” on appointing pro-Japanese traitor Ri Wan Yong as “chief delegate vested with full authority in concluding the agreement" and the "memorandum on the promulgation of the annexation treaty and the royal edict of emperors of the two countries" stating that both countries would simultaneously announce the conclusion of the treaty.

The documents had actually been written by a person at the Korean Residency-General, a colonial ruling machine of the Japanese imperialists.

These facts prove that the feudal government of Korea had been unable to participate in drawing up the treaty and that the Korean Residency-General, under the instructions of the Japanese imperialists, cooked up relevant documents and announced them by force, irrespective of the will of the feudal Korean government.

The absence of the signature of Emperor Sunjong on his “instruction announcing the annexation" which was made public on August 29 1910 is also another important piece of evidence proving that the treaty is illegal and invalid.

The Korean people will never forget the crimes committed by the Japanese imperialists who inflicted all sorts of misfortunes on them by imposing colonial rule over Korea for decades on the strength of the illegal and invalid papers invented with trickery and high-handedness, and will surely make Japan pay for that.