North-South Joint Academic Symposium held
KCNA
Pyongyang, February 21 (KCNA) -- The north-south joint academic symposium on the crimes related to the Japanese imperialists' forcible drafting of Koreans was held here on Thursday.
Present there were scholars in the field of social science, members of the institutions concerned and members of the south side's delegation to the north-south joint exhibition of materials on these crimes including South Korean historians.
Ho Jong Ho, chairman of the history society of the DPRK, and Kang Man Gil, president of Sangji University of South Korea, addressed the symposium. They were followed by others.
They said that in the whole period of their military occupation of Korea after their invasion the Japanese imperialists forcibly drafted Koreans in a brutal manner and massacred them, the most hideous state-sponsored crimes against humanity in human history.
They cited historical facts to prove that the indiscriminate drafting of the Koreans for slave labor was part of the Japanese imperialists' policy to enforce a harsh colonial rule over Korea aimed at exterminating the Korean nation and a deliberate and premeditated crime to attain its final goal of sacrificing the Korean nation for the prosperity of the Yamato nation.
Referring to the recently disclosed fact that since the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese war in 1937 the Japanese imperialists forcibly drafted more than 8.4 million Koreans, they cited Japanese government documents including the recently surveyed statistical data to prove that the Japanese imperialists drafted a great number of young and middle-aged Koreans under the pretexts of "military service," "labor conscription" and "volunteers' corps".
All these facts go to clearly prove that it is an unavoidable state duty of Japan to compensate Koreans whom it had forcibly drafted, they added.
They urged the Japanese Government, an assailant, to probe the truth behind the hideous crimes committed by Japan against the Korean people in the past and make a sincere apology and a full compensation for them.
An appeal to all the Koreans in the north and the south and abroad was released there.
The appeal called on all the Koreans to wage a nationwide movement to denounce Japan's brazen-faced criminal acts and force it to apologize and compensate for its unprecedented crimes against humanity.
It expressed the belief that all the Koreans and the world progressive people would positively respond to this just appeal.
