Rodong Sinmun Friday says this in a signed article.

The U.S. military occupation of south Korea was an arbitrary practice perpetrated by an aggressor as it violated the desire and right of the Koreans to achieve independent development, the article notes, and goes on:

The history of the U.S. occupation of south Korea was a blood-stained history of crimes committed by the horrible man-killers and brazen-faced aggressors and a history of vicious anti-reunification plots as it persistently blocked the concord and reunification of the Korean nation.

The U.S. imperialists brutally massacred at least one million innocent south Koreans in just five years after their occupation of south Korea and more than 1. 24 million others during the past Korean War. Their monstrous massacre of Koreans continued in the post-war period, too. The human and material damage inflicted by the U.S. imperialists upon Koreans after their occupation of south Korea amounted to trillions of U.S. dollars.

It was the U.S. that orchestrated "May 16 Military Coup" in the 1960s to dampen the desire for reunification which rapidly grew strong in south Korea under the slogan "Let us go north, come south and let us meet at Panmunjom!". It was again the U.S. that unrolled a separatist policy and cooked up the Yusin dictatorial regime to dash the hope and expectation of all the Koreans towards reunification when they mounted after the publication of the July 4 joint statement which clarified the three principles of national reunification in the 1970s.

It was none other than the U.S. that escalated the Team Spirit joint military exercises as soon as multi-channeled dialogues and contacts kicked off between the north and the south in the 1980s and blocked the dynamic movement for national reunification by resuming the Team Spirit joint military exercises and kicking up an anti-DPRK nuclear racket when it was under way in the north and the south and overseas in the 1990s.

This year the U.S. prodded the south Korean puppet forces into fabricating a warship case and is now staging ceaseless provocative exercises for a war of aggression against the DPRK under the pretext of this case.

It is the firm will of the Korean nation to put an end to the foreign presence in south Korea, a source of misfortune and disgrace.