The statement said that no matter how much water may flow under the bridge, the DPRK will never forget the heinous crimes committed by Japan.

It went on:

We can not but emphasize that the Japanese imperialists dragged about 8400000 Korean young and middle-aged people to the sites of the war for overseas aggression and hard-work sites in order to invade the continent, compelled 200000 Korean women to suffer the miserable fate as sexual slaves for the Imperial Japanese Army and mercilessly killed more than one million people.

This being a hard fact, the Japanese government is leaving no means untried to evade the responsibility for the settlement of its past, far from sincerely admitting all the crimes committed by Japan against the Korean people and reflecting on them.

It is also rushing headlong into militarism in order to realize its daydream about the "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" by describing the heinous killers as "heroes" and imbuing the rising generation with ultra-nationalism while groundlessly beautifying and justifying the history of crimes.

The horrible climate of the Japanese society affected by the harsh whirlwind of national chauvinism and hostile policy towards the DPRK and the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan reminds everyone of the days when the Japanese imperialists embarked upon the road of invading Korea with sharp military swords a century ago.

All the Korean victims of Japan's past crimes and their bereaved families sharply denounce with bitter resentment the arrogant and anachronistic behaviors of Japan which is running amuck to realize its ambition to reinvade the Korean Peninsula while going against the trend of the times without any guilty conscience of its past crimes.

Japan's settlement of the past is not an issue which may be settled or not, but is the moral duty of the Japanese government under international law and historical and bounden state duty that must be fulfilled even after the replacement of generations.

The longer the Japanese government evades the settlement of its past, the greater the national anger of our people will become beyond control, and it will have to pay dearly for it.