The statement says:

The biggest crime committed by the Japanese imperialists during their military occupation of Korea is that they cruelly killed Koreans.

Enforcing a brutal military rule, "cultural rule" and the fascist terror rule, they perpetrated such thrice-cursed crimes against humanity as massacring Koreans.

"Koreans should obey the Japanese laws, otherwise they should face deaths" and "It would be satisfactory if Koreans were exterminated as the Ainus in Hokkaido were done." This was the basic mode whereby the Japanese imperialists enforced a colonial man-killing rule over the Koreans.

On this basis they massively suppressed and killed patriots and other Koreans for having the spirit of national independence and anti-Japanese consciousness.

The Japanese imperialists conducted "punitive" operations by mobilizing huge aggression forces in a bid to put down the anti-Japanese volunteers struggle of the Korean people for winning the independence of the country.

When there was the March First Popular Uprising in 1919, they brutally massacred at least 100,000 Koreans nationwide.

In 1920 they committed the massacre of Koreans in Jiandao by mobilizing their forces stationed in Korea, police force in North and South Hamgyong provinces, the garrison of Manchuria Railways, etc.

They arrested and put in custody workers, peasants and students at random, mercilessly cracking down on the anti-Japanese struggle of the Korean people including the June Tenth Independence Movement in 1926, the general strike of Wonsan harbor workers and the Kwangju student incident.

Entering the 1930s, they ran with blood-shot eyes to "suppress" Koreans, blustering that if 100 Koreans were killed, there would be at least a communist among them. They shouted "Kill Koreans at random" and cried out for implementing the "three-point policy": Kill everybody, set fire on everything and loot everything.

They, at the same time, set up all kinds of repressive machines and cooked up and promulgated evil laws, trampling down upon even the slightest expression of the elementary human rights and freedom of Koreans, arresting and throwing innocent people behind bars and torturing and killing them under absurd pretexts.

In order to carry out their policy of massacring Koreans the Japanese imperialists posted most notorious fascists in Japan as the "governors general of Korea" who directly enforced their colonial rule on the spot.

Their massacre of Koreans had become all the more undisguised since 1938. In this period they kidnapped and took away more than 8.4 million Koreans, drove over 417,000 of them as cannon fodder for war and hurled at least 7,784,800 into slave labor sites and reduced 200,000 Korean women to comfort women for the Imperial Japanese Army, taking the lives of many people. At least 700,000 of those who had been kidnapped and walked away and more than 143,000 of those comfort women were killed.

The Japanese imperialists killed more than one million Koreans in total during their military occupation of Korea. This means that one for every 20 of the population of Korea at that time was killed by them.

Their unprecedented suppression and massacre were perpetrated, pursuant to the Japanese authorities' ambition for aggression and policy for exterminating the Korean nation, a policy aimed to sacrifice a nation and a country for their domination over Asia and the rest of the world.

What merits a serious attention in their criminal attempt to exterminate the Korean nation was that they pursued the policy of assimilating the Koreans as Japanese in the most crafty and persistent method in a bid to enlarge the "Yamato nation."

The Japanese imperialists set it as the ultimate aim of their rule over Korea to "assimilate Koreans as Japanese" and regarded it as a way for attaining it to eliminate the history of Korea and its cultural tradition and national character.

From the very day of their occupation of Korea they set in motion all the ruling machines, adopting it as their state policy to fully enslave the Koreans and eliminate their national character.

In order to deprive the Koreans of their national character and soul, they undisguisedly enforced the policy for "making Koreans Japanese subjects", part of their brutal fascist moves in the field of ideology and culture.

What they sought here among other things was to eliminate from the minds of Koreans the national spirit by infusing into them the ideas that "Japan and Korea are one community" and "the Japanese and the Korean are of the same ancestry."

They worked hard to implant into the minds of the Koreans the samurai spirit in a bid to "Japanize" in decades the Korean nation with a history spanning 5,000 years.

A particular mention should be made of the fact that the Japanese imperialists did not allow the Koreans to use their mother tongue but forced them to use Japanese language in a bid to exterminate the Korean nation.

Under the slogan "Put the conception of Japan and Korea being one into practice, beginning with the use of Japanese" they forced all the Koreans to use Japanese language not only in government offices, companies, schools, factories but also at families, churches and even in public bath houses.

Under the pretext of "changing Koreans' names into Japanese," they committed such unpardonable crime as depriving the Koreans of their own names from 1940.

The Japanese imperialists' unpardonable criminal attempt to exterminate the Korean nation found an expression in that they savagely plundered Korea of its material resources to stifle it.

They proclaimed the "Land Survey Act" under the pretext of "survey of right to land ownership," illegally expropriating more than one million hectares of land under the pretence of "violation of procedure", "uncertain evidence", etc.

Meanwhile, they took away 39 million tons of rice under the signboard of "increased rice production plan", "grain delivery," etc.

They took away and slaughtered at least 1,943,000 heads of cattle which Korean peasants regarded as their flesh.

On May 1, 1918, they promulgated the "Forest Survey Act," expropriating 13 million hectares out of 16 million hectares of forest of Korea under the name of "state forest" and handing over the rest to Japanese landowners and pro-Japanese stooges.

They fabricated such colonial predatory acts as "Korea Mining Act" and "Fishery Act," plundering Korea of its rich underground and aquatic resources in the harshest manner.

The material resources looted by the Japanese imperialists in Korea reached astronomical figures at their face value.

The mental, human and material damage the Korean people suffered due to the colonial rule by Japan is the biggest one in human history in the light of the form it was done and its contents and scope.

Nevertheless, Japan has persistently sought to stage a comeback to Korea since its defeat, far from liquidating its past crimes.

It is the invariable Korea policy of Japan to reduce the Koreans to its slaves and make Korea part of its territory.

Over the last 65 years since its defeat Japan has persistently resorted to political and military threats and blackmails and economic sanctions against the DPRK, regarding the latter as a thorn in the flesh. It has also persisted in the harsh national discrimination and suppression of Koreans in Japan and their descendants who live there due to the aftermath of the colonial rule of the Japanese imperialists.

These actions of Japan are obviously an extension of the moves of Imperial Japan to exterminate the Korean nation.

All the facts go to prove that Japan is the sworn enemy of the Korean nation as it committed crimes never to be condoned down through the generations to come.

The army and people of the DPRK are fully determined to force Japan to pay for all its crimes.

Japan should behave itself, properly understanding their will, and make honest apology and reparation to the Korean nation for its past crimes.