This is a revelation of a foolish attempt of Japan to persistently shun its admission, apology and reparation for its past crimes and incite hostility toward the DPRK.

The prime minister and other politicians of Japan are talking about the "comprehensive settlement of the past history" in international arena, while creating impression that the DPRK-Japan relations are not mended due to the attitude of the DPRK. This is preposterous.

It is a key point in improving the DPRK-Japan relations for Japan to redress its past crimes.

However, the reactionary ruling quarters and other ultra-right forces in Japan have not shown any willingness to turn over a new leaf by redeeming its inglorious past.

On August 27 last Prime Minister Noda manifested his will to reexamine Kono's statement in 1993 in which he expressed apology and repentance of sexual slavery for the Imperial Japanese Army, sparking off public furor.

When interviewed by the Wall Street Journal on September 23, he again blustered that Japan has no plan to make apology and reparation for the sexual slavery, describing it as "an issue that found solution." He even made such absurd and impertinent remarks that "the issue would only hurt feelings of the conscientious Japanese."

Who is unconscientious and who offends whom?

Such shameless behavior can be found in Japan only.

Such politicians undisguisedly negating the crime-woven past are riding roughshod in Japan.

This is the true picture of Japan allegedly wishing to become a "normal state."

Japan occupied Korea by use of force and enforced an unprecedentedly harsh colonial rule over it in the past. In that period the Japanese imperialists inflicted too many mental, moral, human and material losses upon the Korean people to enumerate.

The Japanese imperialists forcibly drafted and abducted at least 8.4 million Koreans to use them as cannon fodder and forced them to toil and moil like beasts of burden. They brutally killed more than a million Koreans and forced 200,000 Korean women into sexual slavery. They brought disgrace to them and killed many of them.

They perpetrated hideous crimes against the Korean and other Asian peoples.

The above-said insolent attitude of Japan naturally impaired the image of Japan and earned the distrust of the international community.

No one would trust Japan.

Japan's earliest possible settlement of its past crimes is for itself.

The DPRK-Japan relations would be unthinkable without Japan's settlement of its past.