Matter is that this islet was used as a site of forced labor for Koreans in the last century.

During the Pacific War, the Japanese imperialists forced nearly 1,000 Korean draftees into slave labor in a mine 1,000 meters underwater. More than 120 Koreans lost their lives due to the Japanese brutal atrocity.

Besides this bloody history, the islet is called "warship islet" as it looks like a warship. High breakwater enclosing the islet gives the islet another name "prison islet".

The name of the islet alone makes one's blood run cold. But Japan is set to have it registered as world heritage site in 2015, calling it an "industrial heritage that contributed to the modern age".

In other words, Japan seeks to veil the vestige of blood indicative of the Japanese imperialists' past crime-woven history and use the islet for publicizing "civilization".

To this end, Japan has not informed the UNESCO of the bloody history of slave labor done by Koreans on the islet.

Other sites Japan tries to include in the list of world cultural heritage are Mitsubishi Shipbuilding Yard and other places where Koreans were forced into slave labor.

This is another intolerable hideous mockery of the Koreans and an act of distorting history.

As universally recognized, the Japanese imperialists' more than four decades long military occupation of Korea was the unprecedented history of aggression and crimes against humanity.

Japan drafted more than 8.4 million young and middle-aged Koreans to force them into medieval slave labor and make them cannon fodder for its aggression wars, and cruelly killed over one million.

The sexual slavery by 200,000 Korean women was the most hideous crime against humanity in its scope and barbarity.

However, the Japanese reactionaries openly said that "Japan does not think that it committed any crime during the Second World War". It even called for amending 1993 Kono statement which admitted Japan's responsibility for the sexual slavery system for the Imperial Japanese Army.

It even portrayed its aggression wars against Korea and other countries as "liberation" from European and U.S. powers and the Pacific War as the "greater East Asia war for liberation of colonies". It also has resorted to whole gamut of tricks to deny the past history while saying that the Asians should not forget Japan's "benevolence".

It is prompted by this intention that Japan moves to include Hashima Islet and other sites of forced labor of Koreans in the list of "cultural heritage".

Japan has persistently denied and distorted its past history of aggression and crimes. Now it has gone so brazen-faced as to describe those sites related to its past history as "cultural heritage". This reveals Japan's true colors.

Japan regards aggression and plunder as "culture" and inherits criminal history as "heritage". This militaristic action will invite bigger denunciation and rejection by the Koreans and other Asian people.