Shortly ago, the Gunma prefectural authorities of Japan committed such fascist violence as forcibly removing a memorial monument to the Korean victims of forcible drafting.

The monument, erected in the Gunma Prefectural Park in April 2004 in the hope that people would always remember and repent of the crimes committed by the Japanese imperialists against the Korean people in the past and promote peace in Asia and friendship between the DPRK and Japan, has been a symbol of the lessons of history for nearly 20 years.

However, the prefectural authorities turned down the renewal of the licence period for the monument and decided on its removal, terming the phrase "forcible drafting," mentioned at the memorial service held in front of the monument in 2012, "loss of political neutrality" and "violation of its establishment purpose".

The Gunma prefectural authorities had been impossible to attain their goal due to the fierce protests by the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan (Chongryon) and Japanese civic and social circles. This year they finally removed the monument in such a forcible way as "administrative execution".

This is a base act of denying the past crimes committed by the Japanese imperialists, who inflicted untold pain and misfortune upon Korea and many other countries and nations in Asia, and beautifying their colonial rule over them. It is an unpardonable unethical act of again rubbing salt into the wounds of the direct victims of forcible drafting and their descendants.

Japan can never cover up the forcible drafting and forced labor it committed against the Korean people in the last century.

In order to forcibly mobilize human and material resources needed for the war of aggression on April 1, 1938, the Japanese imperialists promulgated the "National Mobilization Law" containing the gangster-like paragraph - "the enactment of the current law applies to external territories (colonies)." They also instituted or revised such evil laws as "Ordinance on Labor Conscription" and "the Women's Volunteer Corps Service Ordinance", thus forcibly drafting and abducting the Korean people into the sites of death, irrespective of their age and sex.

Thousands of forcibly drafted Korean people were forced into slave labor at munitions factories, underground factories, airports, power stations and mines in Gunma Prefecture alone. Many Koreans lost their lives in the alien land at the end of their harsh labor and miserable life.

It is the legal duty and due obligation of the assailant nation to feel sorry for the victims, make reparation for the crimes and prevent the recurrence of such misfortune.

But the Gunma prefectural authorities revealed their anti-historical and unethical true colors and wild revanchist ambition through the unreasonable and forcible removal of the memorial monument to the Korean victims of forcible drafting.

What merits a more serious attention is that the Gunma prefectural governor who led and directed the removal is a die-hard ultra-right politician steeped in hostility toward the DPRK to the marrow of his bones, and is in cahoots with the behind-the-scene forces working hard to remove the monument to the Korean victims of the great Kanto quake in Tokyo and other similar monuments across the Japanese archipelago.

To write off the past history is meant to repeat it.

Chongryon, Koreans in Japan and Japanese political parties and social organizations are now waging a dynamic struggle demanding the restoration of the monument, resolutely denouncing the unreasonable violence.

The Gunma prefectural authorities should ponder over the consequences to be entailed by the present situation which sparked off unpardonable anger at home and abroad and restore the memorial monument at once.

They can never evade the responsibility for the fascist violence.