According to the report, the Aso family took an active part in the Japanese imperialist aggression forces' scenario to convert Korea into a war supply base and a military bridgehead for invasion of the continent and took the lead in exploiting the Koreans and looting natural resources abundant in Korea.

Takichi Aso, great-grandfather of Taro Aso, was known to be the founder of the "Aso Group". He developed Jikuho coal fields in the Kyushu area at a time when there was a rapid growth of the demand for coal essential for securing materiel for a war of aggression, thus raking up huge profits. He gradually stretched his tentacles to railways and even to the financial field.

From early in the 1920s till the defeat of Japanese imperialism the Aso family took a great many Koreans to its coal mines and forced them to do hard slave labor.

The number of the Koreans who were drafted to Japanese coal mines from autumn of 1939 to 1941 reached at least 58,000. Among them were more than 21,000 Koreans who were taken away to the Jikuho area of Fukuoka Prefecture where the "Aso Coal Mines" were concentrated.

Over 150,000 Koreans were drafted to the coal mines in the Jikuho area of Fukuoka Prefecture between 1939 and 1945 and not a few of them were taken away to the "Aso Coal Mines".

The Aso Coal Mining Co. Ltd., took away Koreans to the "Aso Coal Mines" under various signboards of "recruitment" from early in the 1920s in conspiracy with the old Japanese government and forcibly drafted and kidnapped Koreans under the guise of "government good offices", "labor conscription", etc. after the promulgation of the "state general mobilization law".

Recorded in the diagram on forcible drafting of Koreans in the document titled "top secret, March 1944, paper on Korean workers in Japan " contained in a "prefectural official document" of Fukuoka Prefecture is that young and middle aged Koreans were taken away to the "Aso Coal Mines" in the prefecture and their number reached 7,996, among them 4,919 deserters and 56 dead.

The Japanese government and businesses have neither admitted nor redeemed the forcible drafting of Koreans and forced labor committed in the past but denied and justified them, keen on the moves to revive militarism and realize the ambition for overseas expansion. It is Prime Minister of Japan Taro Aso who is taking the lead in such moves.

Japan's settlement of its past crimes, in essence, constitutes a core issue of the DPRK-Japan relations because it is obliged to make an honest apology and reparation for all the manpower, mental and material damage done to the Korean people in the past.

Prime Minister Aso and his government and Japanese businesses should thoroughly probe the truth about all the crimes committed against the Korean people in the past and open them to the public. They should, at the same time, make an honest apology and reparation to the dead and the bereaved families, find out remains of all those killed and get them buried in their birthplaces and the places where their families live according to the wishes of the bereaved families and ferret out the criminals responsible for them and severely punish them according to their responsibilities.

Aso had better take a political decision to settle them as early as possible before it is too late.