A senior North Korean official on a visit to South Korea called Friday for Japan to apologize for the wartime forced labor of thousands of Koreans. Ri Jong Hyok made the comments at a forum in Goyang, north of Seoul, which represented a rare effort by the rival Koreas to…
A senior North Korean official on a visit to South Korea called Friday for Japan to apologize for the wartime forced labor of thousands of Koreans.
Ri Jong Hyok made the comments at a forum in Goyang, north of Seoul, which represented a rare effort by the rival Koreas to discuss Japan’s actions before and during World War II. Anti-Japanese sentiment runs deep in both Koreas, which were colonized by Japan for 35 years before their division at the end of the war in 1945.
“Japan for the past 70 years has not even acknowledged its variety of war crimes such as forced labor and sexual slavery, let alone apologizing for them or compensating the victims,” said Ri, vice chairman of North Korea’s Korea Asia-Pacific Peace Committee.
“(Japan) has been denying, concealing and downplaying its crimes and has even started praising them, taking steps toward creating a social atmosphere that would favor a reinvasion (of the Korean Peninsula),” he said.
