North-South joint exhibition opens
KCNA
Pyongyang, February 20 (KCNA) -- The north-south joint exhibition of materials on the crimes related to the Japanese imperialists' forcible drafting of Koreans opened here on the occasion of the 84th anniversary of the March 1 Popular Uprising, nationwide anti-Japanese patriotic resistance.
Displayed at the exhibition are more than 200 photos, documented materials and at least 230 books disclosing the crimes related to the forcible drafting of Koreans, just part of the crimes committed by the Japanese imperialists against the Korean nation in the past.
According to the materials, the Japanese imperialists hurled over 417,000 young and middle-aged and teenage Koreans into a war of aggression as cannon fodder, press ganged 7,784,839 Koreans into forced labour in coal and ore mines and the construction sites of railways, power stations, shipyards and airports and other military establishments and massacred them in cold blood to keep secret and took 200,000 Korean women to battlefields during their war of aggression as sexual slaves for the imperial Japanese army and killed them in cold blood.
An opening ceremony took place at the people's palace of culture today.
Present there were Ri Jong Hyok, vice-chairman of the Korean Asia-Pacific Peace Committee, Ho Jong Ho, chairman of the History Society of the DPRK, and Jong Chang Gyu, director of the History Institute of the Academy of Social Sciences.
The members of the south side's delegation were also present there.
Ju Jin Gu, chairman of the north side's preparatory committee, addressing the ceremony, said that during their military occupation and colonial rule over Korea the Japanese imperialists committed such hideous crimes as forcibly drafting Koreans ranging from old men aged 70 to teenage girls, forcing them to labor like beasts of burden and killing them.
As the Japanese imperialists' forcible drafting of Koreans is a universally recognized historical fact, it is a bounden duty and a need of the times for Japan to honestly repent of and compensate for its part crimes, he noted, and continued:
All the Koreans demand Japan adequately compensate for its wrongs. The north and the south of Korea are called upon to wage a nationwide joint struggle to this end.
Chairman of the south side's preparatory committee Kang Man Gil, president of Sangji University, said in his opening address that if south and North Korean historians frequently meet and cooperate in the academic field and teach the present and future generations on the basis of one and the same history book, this will be greatly conducive to accelerating the country's reunification.
Kim Won Ung and Kim Hui Son, South Korean assemblymen, in their speeches said that Japan is talking about the legitimacy of the war of aggression and the forcible drafting committed by it, far from making an apology and compensation to Asian victimized nations including the south and the north of Korea, while attempting to distort history. They called on the Korean nation to pool strength to solve the issue of Japan's past.
At the end of the ceremony the participants looked round the materials on display.
In another development, survivors of the Japanese forcible drafting in the DPRK were interviewed by media persons on the same day.
