In those days they regarded Kojong as a thorn in their flesh as he was stubbornly opposed to their policy of colonial domination over Korea.

Kojong made every possible effort to check their moves for aggression as they faked up "treaties" gravely encroaching upon the sovereignty of Korea including the "Ulsa (1905) Five-point Treaty" and vociferated about their "legality".

He declared the "Ulsa Five-point Treaty" null and void, wrote his personal letters and telegrams in this regard and sent them to heads of state of different countries in 1905 and 1906.

He sent his emissary to the Second International Peace Conference held in Hague in June 1907 so that he might declare before the world the treaty was invalid. Kojong also sent his secret royal ordinance to patriotic scholars in which he made an appeal for righteous volunteers' struggle. The ordinance called for killing Ito (resident-general) and Hasegawa (commander of the Japanese army in Korea). He put steady pressure upon the pro-Japanese Cabinet installed by the Japanese imperialists under the authority of the emperor, throwing the pro-Japanese lackeys into utter uneasiness.

On the basis of calculation that if Kojong is allowed to remain on the throne, it will be a stumbling block in the way of executing their policy for colonial domination over Korea, the Japanese imperialists dethroned him and poisoned him to death on Jan. 20, 1919.

A Japanese book referred to this incident as follows: "Truth about the fact was disclosed at last. The Japanese imperialists ordered their running dog Han Sang Hak to serve Kojong with poisoned meal. In less than one hour Kojong suffered from serious trouble. He breathed his last all of a sudden after groaning in agony. Both eyes of the emperor were red and spots could be seen on all his body. They also made his two waiting maids die all of sudden as they were witnesses to the truth about the incident."

It was written in a diary of Yuzaburo Kuratomi, minister for financial examination of the Imperial Household Agency of Japan at that time, that the Japanese Prime Minister instructed his resident general in Korea to poison Kojong to death for the mere reason that he refused to recognize the treaty.

This irrefutably testifies to the Japanese imperialists' assassination of Kojong.

It was unprecedented state-sponsored terrorism, a wanton infringement upon the sovereignty of Korea and the dignity of its people.

Countless are the crimes committed by them against the Korean people.

They forcibly drafted more than 8.4 million young and middle-aged Koreans to the shambles of wars of aggression and slave labor sites, mercilessly killing over one million Koreans during the colonial fascist rule over Korea.

They forced 200 000 Korean women into sexual slavery for the imperial Japanese army, mercilessly violating their chastity.

What the Japanese imperialists committed against the Korean people were hideous crimes against humanity unprecedented in the history of war for aggression in their brutality, cruelty and craftiness.

The Japanese reactionaries, however, are letting loose a spate of shameless remarks that there is no evidence to prove those crimes, far from making an honest apology and reparation for them.

They have become all the more undisguised in their moves to evade the responsibility for the crimes since the emergence of the Abe Cabinet.

But Japan is seriously mistaken. The Korean people are no longer what used to be in the past when their dignity was trampled down and its sovereignty violated at the point of bayonet of the Japanese imperialists.

The army and people of the DPRK will force Japan to pay a thousand-fold price for its past crimes.