Abe sends offering to Yasukuni Shrine, cabinet ministers visit

Ex-Japanese PM opposes change to pacifist course

PYONGYANG - The heinous crimes committed by Japan in the past can never be covered up or written off, a leading newspaper of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) said Saturday.

In an editorial, Rodong Sinmun demanded that Japan repent its war crimes and make amends.

"The Japanese imperialists forcibly drafted and abducted millions of Koreans, brutally killed more than one million Koreans and forced 200,000 Korean women into sexual slavery," the newspaper said, likening the state-organized atrocities to "slave hunt" in the Middle Ages in terms of the scale and methods.

The Japanese aggressor troops deprived the Koreans of the right to speak their mother tongue and use their Korean names, and looted a large number of cultural treasures from the peninsula, it added.

It is a request of the international community and a call of the times that Japan, which perpetuated hideous crimes in the past, should repent its past crimes and think of ways to redress them, it said.

When the 69th anniversary of Japan's surrender in World War II was marked on Friday, a victim organization in the DPRK called on Japan to repent its history of aggression and shoulder legal and moral responsibilities to strive for stable and strong international relations.