Recollecting that a great number of Koreans had met grievous deaths while being forced into slave labor in nearly 120 enterprises including coal mines, mines and power stations in the prefecture in the last century, speakers there stressed that such sore past should never be forgotten.

This proves that the nefarious crimes committed by Japan can never be forgotten, no matter how much water may flow under the bridge, and the deep-seated enmity toward Japan is getting bitterer.

As recognized by history, Japan is a criminal state which deprived Korea of its sovereignty at the point of bayonet and ran amuck to exterminate the Korean nation by enforcing the most outrageous and brutal colonial rule in the past.

It forcibly brought more than 8.4 million Korean people to battle fields for aggression and slave labor sites by invoking its government and military power, and cruelly slaughtered them in the end. This was an unprecedented crime against humanity.

There still remain such forced labor sites across the Japanese archipelago, which bring to light the inhuman crimes.

A lot of Koreans, who had been brought to various parts of Japan through abduction, little short of the "slave hunting" dating back to the medieval age, met miserable death after being driven into the most dangerous and hardest labor without any elementary safety measures.

As a Korean draftee testified, the Korean workers were treated "more cruelly than a prisoner or a slave" and the drudgery sites were just like "veritable hell."

The Japanese imperialists beat and starved the Korean draftees to death and massacred them to "keep secret" and used them as guinea pigs for developing germ weapons.

They buried under the sea a lot of Korean draftees on way home after liberation of Korea by sinking the ship carrying them by detonating explosives and locked the survivors in a naval billet and killed them by blowing up a steam tank.

The number of Korean people killed by the Japanese imperialists during their colonial rule over Korea runs to over one million.

Japan's hideous unethical crimes can never be pardoned even though it apologizes to the Korean people for them thousands of times.

However, Japan has gone so impudent as to desperately dodge its responsibility for atoning for the past crimes, far from making apology and reparation for them.

It seeks to remove the memorials to the Korean victims of forcible drafting built across the world, saying that "it did good things in Korea" and "there was no forcible drafting of Koreans". It unhesitatingly registered the sites of forced labor including the Hashima Coal Mine as world cultural heritage.

Acts of discriminating against, persecuting and threatening Koreans in Japan, the descendants of the Korean victims of forcible drafting, have reached a serious phase.

There are many countries and nations which took wrong paths and committed crimes in the past but Japan is the one and only country which persistently refuses to reflect on and atone for its crime-woven past.

With no sleight of hand can Japan cover up the past crimes.

It can never evade its legal and moral obligation for atoning for its crime-woven past.

The Korean people will certainly make the sworn enemy Japan pay dearly for its crimes against the Korean nation.