The Japanese imperialists, regarding the quake in Kanto area as a good chance for suppressing the Koreans in Japan, hurled army and police troops and gangsters into mercilessly killing more than 23 000 innocent Koreans in a little more than ten days, a spokesman for the Association of Korean Victims of Forcible Drafting and Their Bereaved Families said in a statement on Saturday.

The statement went on:

History records many natural disasters but knows no such massacre the Japanese imperialists committed in an extremely hideous manner by making Koreans a scapegoat in a bid to calm down the public uneasiness caused by a natural disaster and divert elsewhere the public discontent at the regime's unpopular rule.

The massacre committed against the Koreans in Japan right after the great Kanto quake clearly shows that the Japanese imperialists are, indeed, cutthroats with extreme misanthropy and national chauvinism, vampires, devilish manslaughters and sworn enemy of the Korean people.

Japan has not yet clearly probed the truth behind the massacre though 95 years have lapsed. Worse still, it has neither atoned nor apologized for the thrice-cursed crime.

No matter how much water may flow under the bridge, the DPRK will never forget all evil deeds committed by the Japanese imperialists but will surely force Japan to pay dearly for them.

The Japanese authorities should clearly know that their blood-stained past can never be justified and written off, and clearly probe the truth behind the massacre and make a sincere apology and reparation for it.