2024.2.8.

Shortly ago, the Gunma prefectural authorities of Japan committed such thrice-cursed crimes as forcibly removing a memorial monument to the Korean victims of forcible drafting in the Gunma Prefectural Park despite the strong protest at home and abroad.

The Association of Korean Victims of Forcible Drafting and Their Bereaved Families in a statement on Tuesday bitterly condemned the reckless act of the Gunma prefectural authorities as an unethical fascist violence and the height of immorality and corruption.

It goes on:

Japan’s forced removal of the memorial monument is a part of shameless reinvasion to realize its ambition to become a military giant by taking issue with the DPRK while covering up the true color of unethical crimes committed by Japan in the last century, effacing guilty conscience of its people and evading the settlement of its past with the DPRK by all means.

Not content with the removal of the memorial monument in Gunma Prefecture, the Japanese right-wing reactionaries are now making frantic efforts to remove not only the memorial monument to the Korean victims of the great Kanto quake in the Yokoami Park in Tokyo, but also the memorial monuments in other regions. And they don’t hesitate to harm the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan and the DPRK.

To say in addition, the removal of a monument would neither cover up the Japan’s crime-woven record nor change the status of Japan as a war criminal state.

The removal of the memorial monument is an unpardonable heinous crime of killing the victims of the Japanese imperialists’ forcible drafting twice and nothing can redeem the crime.

The Gunma prefectural authorities should regain their reason and discretion, though belatedly, and make sincere apology to the Korean victims of forcible drafting, their bereaved families and all the persons concerned and turn out in the rehabilitation of the memorial monument for themselves.

We will settle accounts not only with the Gunma prefectural authorities but also with Japan for all crimes committed against the DPRK and its people for centuries.

Rodong Sinmun