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Japanese authorities urged to rectify hostile policy toward DPRK and Chongryon

KCNA

    Pyongyang, June 5 (KCNA) -- Jo Ryong Hyon, vice-Chairman of the Central Standing Committee of the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan(Chongryon), issued a statement on June 2 denouncing Taro Aso, Chairman of the Policy Research Council of the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan, for making remarks seriously infringing upon the dignity of the Korean nation. Recalling that Taro Aso, referring to the policy pursued by the Japanese imperialists to force Koreans to change their names into Japanese ones at a lecture, claimed that Japan enforced the policy because the Koreans asked it to give them Japanese names, the statement dismissed this as anachronistic remarks intended to seriously tamper with the history of the Japanese imperialist aggression of Korea and justify it.
    The utterances made by Aso to embellish the Japanese imperialists' military occupation of Korea in the past with such a preposterous view on the history have touched off the Koreans' surprise and towering grudge, the statement said, and continued:
    The policy on forcing Koreans to change their names into Japanese ones enforced by the Japanese imperialists after their occupation of Korea was a policy to exterminate the Korean nation, something unprecedented in the world history in the 20th century as it was aimed to deprive the Koreans of their peculiar names that carried the soul of the nation.
    The Japanese imperialists enforced this policy, claiming that Koreans were "Imperial Subjects" and "Japan and Korea were One Community". Not content with plundering Korea of all its material resources, the Japanese imperialists drafted millions of young and middle-aged Koreans for a war of aggression through "conscription" and as "student soldiers" and reduced them to the cannon fodder. These are irrefutable stark historical facts.
    It was against this background that the DPRK-Japan Pyongyang Declaration signed by Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi during his DPRK visit in September 2002 says that "the Japanese side admitted, in a spirit of humility, the facts of history that Japan caused tremendous damage and sufferings to the Korean people through its colonial rule in the past, and expressed deep remorse and heartfelt apology." Aso's recent remarks can not be construed otherwise than a brazen-faced distortion of irrefutable historical facts and an intolerable challenge to all Koreans.
    The statement vehemently denounced Aso's recent anachronistic remarks with towering indignation of all the Koreans in Japan.
    It said:
    Aso should immediately withdraw his reckless remarks and sincerely apologize to the Korean nation for them.
    We take this opportunity to strongly demand the Japanese authority ponder over the grave consequences to be entailed by such remarks despising the Korean nation and tampering with the history and immediately rectify its hostile policy toward the DPRK and Chongryon.