The Japanese imperialists organized the "agricultural service corps" with a mission to locally meet Japan’s shortage of food created by their escalation of the war of aggression. They drafted a large number of young Koreans into the corps, forcing them to do slave labour on farms including the reclamation of land.

The imperial Japanese army took away at least 40,000 young and middle-aged Koreans to Japan at that time. 15,700 of them were drafted into the western district forces (Kyushu region), 17,000 into the "corps to support army" in every military district and 13,000 into the "agricultural service corps" and they carried spades and mattocks instead of rifles. This fact was revealed by a telegraphic message discovered in September of 2002 from the "diary of the secret operation of the Japanese troops stationed in Korea" which had been preserved in the library for defense studies of the Japan Defence Agency since it was worked out by the imperial Japanese army on April 8, 1945.

The list of the Korean victims of forcible drafting obtained and disclosed last year dealt with the fact that at least 7,000 young Koreans were drafted into the "agricultural service corps Nos. 3, 4 and 5" for the imperial Japanese army. They were taken away from almost all parts of the Korean Peninsula including North and South Phyongan, Hwanghae, South Hamgyong, North and South Chungchong and Kangwon Provinces in about spring of 1945. It is clear from the data that at that time each corps was made up with 7 companies and each company comprised more than 250 Koreans on an average.

The results of the analysis and investigation into the above-said list confirmed the fact that the person registered with the Japanese name "Taihan Umenobu" on the list of corps No. 3 was victim Jin Thae Bom (born on August 23, 1925) who lived in Taedonggang District, Pyongyang, and died in December 2004 and another person registered with Japanese name "Chirin Kanemura" on the list of corps No. 4 is victim Kim Chi Rin (born on March 11, 1924) who now resides in Central District of Pyongyang.

The report gives a detailed account of how Kim Chi Rin and Jin Thae Bom were drafted into the corps respectively early in January of 1945 and in March of 1945 together with more than 3,000 young and middle-aged Koreans by the force of the evil law called "law on state general mobilization" and were forced to do slave labor there.

The report said that the committee obtained not a few materials proving the slave labour forced by the imperial Japanese army upon many young Koreans drafted into the corps. The Japanese imperialists drove those Koreans to the shambles of their war of aggression and dreadful places of drudgery as their "soldiers" and "civilian employees for the army" in the past.

This was the crime related to the forcible drafting and forced labor. It was a crime against humanity and a crime related to slavery as it seriously challenged the justice and morality of the international community and wantonly breached international law.

The Japanese government is, therefore, obliged to admit its responsibility for the crimes and take practical steps to restore the honor of those victims. But it has evaded the state responsibility for the crimes for the last six decades since the end of the war, insisting that the issue of Japan’s postwar settlement has already been settled through a multi-national treaty and a bilateral treaty despite the resolutions and recommendations of the UN and other international organizations and juridical bodies demanding a fair solution to its crimes related to the forcible drafting and forced labor imposed upon Koreans including the issue of "soldiers" and "civilian employees for the army."

In recent years the Japanese authorities staged a farce of paying "consolation money" to some foreigners in Japan who had been taken away as "soldiers" and "civilian employees" for the imperial Japanese army to gloss over this issue. But they are persistently insisting that there is "no reason to compensate" for the forcible drafting of over 8.4 million Koreans and the abduction of Koreans and other crimes committed by Japan against humanity in the past "in view of the existing law".

The Japanese right-wing reactionaries falsified historical facts by claiming that those crimes are groundless and those Koreans went to Japan of their own accord. They unhesitatingly disallowed victims of the forcible drafting and bereaved families of the DPRK to enter Japan to participate in the meeting to hear testimonies and memorial services held there on several occasions.

What is more serious is that though 60 years have passed since Japan’s defeat the present Japanese government has not made any honest apology and even a small compensation to the victims and the bereaved families in the DPRK who suffered more than any others from the inhuman crimes perpetrated by the Japanese imperialists.

The Japanese government must take this year as an opportunity to liquidate the history of its aggression and crimes in the past, thoroughly probe the truth about the serious human rights abuses committed by Japan in the past including the forcible drafting of Koreans and fully open them to the public, punish those responsible for the crimes and take practical measures to make honest apology and compensation to all the victims and the bereaved families as early as possible.

(KCNA, February 1, 2005)