DPRK Calls For Japan to Liquidate Wartime PastPyongyang on Friday reaffirmed calls for Japan to settle accounts with its wartime past to pave the way for the establishment of good neighborly relations between the two countries."What is essential for improving the relations between the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) and Japan is for the latter to liquidate its past," said Rodong Sinmun, the mouthpiece of the ruling Workers' Party, in a commentary Friday. The paper noted that Japan committed grave crimes and caused a tremendous loss of lives and property and psychological sufferings to the Korean people during its invasion and plunder of the Korean Peninsula. It is an unavoidable legal and moral international responsibility of the Japanese government to apologize and make compensation to the Korean people, it added. However, Japan has so far been reluctant to apologize and compensate, or even admit its past crimes, and it has attempted to whitewash its wars of aggression in the past, the paper said. To reduce hostilities between the two countries constitutes an important guarantee for improving bilateral ties and maintaining stability in northeast Asia. Good relations between the two countries are conducive to Japan, peace in Asia, and the world at large, and conforms to the needs of the times, the paper said. "A worsening in bilateral ties does not serve Japan by any standard," it added. An improvement in DPRK-Japan relations is possible only if Japan has a correct understanding of the trend of the times, adopts a sincere position to settle accounts with its past and abandons its hostile policy toward the DPRK, the paper stressed. The DPRK will work hard for better relations with Japan in accordance with the principles of reconciliation, good neighborliness, independence, equality and mutual benefits, the paper said. |
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