In this regard, Prof. and Dr. Kong Myong Song, director of the Folklore Institute under the Academy of Social Sciences of the DPRK, told KCNA:

The Japanese imperialists, who had plundered Korea of its cultural artefacts from the Imjin Patriotic War (1592-1598), proclaimed the "regulations" on July 4, 1916 after their occupation of Korea.

And they set up such predatory machineries as "committee for survey of historical spots in Korea" to despoil Korea of its valuable cultural assets.

As a result, at least 200 royal mausoleums and 11 000 ancient tombs across the country were pillaged and damaged by the Japanese imperialists.

They also plundered tens of thousands of volumes of historical documents including the Chronicles of the Feudal Joson Dynasty of more than 1 800 volumes and tens of thousands of Koryo ceramics.

According to the rough estimate, the Japanese imperialists looted hundreds of thousands of cultural artefacts during their occupation of Korea and 40 000 pieces of them are now on display at the Tokyo National Museum. They even carried to Japan the walls containing mural paintings from Koguryo tombs.

They were impudent enough to open to the public those cultural assets as Japan's "treasures" and use them as a means for money-making.

Over the past years a number of countries had returned the cultural assets they looted from other countries, but it is only the Japanese reactionaries that have justified their past wrongs and on the contrary are seeking to grab other countries' territories including Tok Islets of Korea though 70 years has passed after Japan's defeat.

Japan should face up to the trend of the times and make an apology and reparation for its past aggression and plunder against Korea and return all the cultural properties it looted.