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North Korea urges Japan to apologize, pay reparations for 'sexual slavery'
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North Korean leader Kim Jong Un guides the 14th enlarged meeting of Political Bureau of 7th Central Committee of WPK in this undated photo released on July 2, 2020 by North Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) in Pyongyang. (KCNA/Reuters/-)
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orth Korea on Saturday urged Japan to "make a sincere apology and reparation" for the "sexual slavery" inflicted on Korean women, as it marks the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the peninsula from Japan's 1910-1945 colonial rule.
"The Korean people clearly remember the past crimes of Japan," said a statement issued by a spokesperson for the Korean Committee on Measures for the Sexual Slavery for Japanese Army and Drafting Victims.
If 200,000 Japanese women had "been forced into sexual slavery by foreign troops...the Japanese people would never forget it," said the statement carried in English by the state-run Korean Central News Agency.
"The Japanese authorities should keenly realize their national responsibility for the inhuman crimes against the Korean people and make a sincere apology and reparation before it is too late," it added.
In recent years, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has voiced eagerness to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un "without conditions" in hopes of making a breakthrough over the issue of Pyongyang's abductions of Japanese nationals in the 1970s and 1980s.
The latest statement, however, indicated that North Korea has little intention to go ahead with such a summit unless Tokyo accepts Pyongyang's demands it pay post-war compensation, some foreign affairs experts say. Japan and North Korea do not maintain diplomatic ties.
Read also: Japan's Abe, on WW2 anniversary, vows not to repeat war, sends offering to shrine
The women are euphemistically called "comfort women" and were forced to work in Japanese military brothels during World War II. Victims came from the Korean Peninsula, the Philippines, mainland China, Taiwan and Japan.
The matter remains a source of much tension between Japan and South Korea, but the neighbors have also been embroiled in spats over trade controls and compensation for wartime labor, some of it forced.
