The March First Popular Uprising was the first nationwide anti-Japanese struggle waged by the entire Korean nation against the brutal colonial rule of the Japanese imperialists and a great patriotic event that propelled the anti-Japanese struggle for national liberation.

The historic significance of the Uprising, lesson drawn from it and the patriotic spirit displayed by the Korean people were expounded at the symposium in which papers exposing the truth behind the Japanese imperialists' criminal policy of obliterating the Korean nation were made public.

The speakers said that the Uprising which started in Pyongyang on March 1, Juche 8 (1919) swept the country and rapidly spread to all the regions where Koreans lived, including Northeast China and Maritime Province of Russia.

People in Pyongyang played a vanguard role in the nationwide anti-Japanese uprising, performing proud feats to be recorded in the Korean history of anti-Japanese struggle for national liberation, they stressed.

They noted that youth and students played the role of pioneer to start the March First Popular Uprising and kindle the flames of the uprising and the role of death-defying vanguard in expanding the anti-Japanese resistance to the whole of Korea.

They cited detailed facts to disclose that the Japanese imperialists' suppression of the uprising was a state-sponsored crime committed by the Japanese government that regarded the obliteration of the Korean nation as its state policy.

The speakers stressed that the Korean people always remember Japan's crime-woven history and will surely force Japan to pay dearly for its crimes.

Present at the symposium were Ri Hye Jong, president of the Academy of Social Sciences, teachers, researchers, lecturers, journalists, editors and officials in relevant fields.