According to information available, dead bodies of more than 70 Koreans who were forced to do hard labor in a mine on Hokkaido of Japan in the 1930s-1940s were cremated after their death. It is presumed that Japan burned the dead bodies in order to cover up the causes of their death such as pneumonia, pulmonary tuberculosis, contusion and asphyxiation as they might bring to light the cruel working conditions at that time.

The Korean victims underwent such bitter sufferings that no other nation of the world has ever experienced. The Japanese imperialists perpetrated such hideous crime against humanity to prevent the world people from knowing the truth about the death of Korean draftees.

It was only a few days ago when it was disclosed that Japan left the remains of Koreans, who met grievous deaths at the hands of the Japanese imperialists, inside the pit faces as they were and in other places uncared for, refusing to hand them over to their relatives and bereaved families in their hometowns. The recent disclosure of the truth about the cremation of Koreans has again lashed people into greater fury.

Most of those persons fell miserable victim to the Japanese imperialists that planned the war of aggression against the Asian continent and set up a fascist war mobilization system.

The Japanese imperialists conducted a wholesale operation to exploit and fleece manpower in Korea, considering all of Koreans as targets of the "Law on Compulsory Labor." They forcibly took Koreans to sites of drudgery or hurled them to war shambles, driving them to death.

More than 8.4 million young and middle-aged Koreans were taken to the above-said sites and war shambles after being forcibly drafted by the Japanese imperialists in Korea. Even women, boys aged 8 and 60 years old men were forced to do slave labor under the name of "Volunteers Corps" and "Patriotic Laborers' Corps".

The Japanese imperialists did not take even elementary labor protection measures for Korean laborers engaged in the most dangerous work, thus forcing many of them to meet tragic deaths in group. Those Koreans starved to death or were buried to death in the collapsed pits or beaten to death. No one knows how many Koreans met such grievous death.

They were even disgraced after their death.

Japan, however, has so far persistently evaded the responsibility to redeem its past crimes, far from making apology and reparation for those hideous crimes against humanity. What is more intolerable is that it has craftily worked to keep those crimes buried into oblivion.

The Japanese authorities have worked hard to evade the responsibility to make apology and reparation to Korea, the biggest victim of the crimes committed by the Japanese imperialists, even though more than six decades have passed since their defeat. They are painting Japan as "a victim" and kicking up an anti-DPRK racket, stoking bitterness toward it.

The political chicanery such as distortion of history to which the Japanese reactionaries are persistently resorting at present, while shunning the settlement of Japan's past is little different from what Imperial Japan did to cover up its crimes at any cost.

Japan is a brazen-faced country as it has refused to make reparation though so many years have elapsed since it inflicted indescribably huge human, material and mental damage to Korea and its people throughout its history.

It is challenging the Korean people shaking with bitter grudge and resentment at it, persistently refusing to admit its past crimes. They will certainly force the Japanese reactionaries to pay a high price for the blood shed by their brothers and sisters.