PYONGYANG, Aug. 15 (Xinhua) -- The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) Tuesday urged Japan to reflect on and assume responsibility for the wartime crimes committed by the Japanese army against Asian peoples, including sexual slavery.
A spokesman for the Korean Committee on Measures for the Sexual Slavery for Japanese Army and Drafting Victims issued a statement Tuesday on the 72nd anniversary of the unconditional surrender of Japan in the World War II.
"When the whole world mourns the guiltless war dead, high-ranking officials and politicians of Japan visited the Yasukuni Shrine which enshrines the departed soul of war criminals who took their lives," said the statement.
On Tuesday, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe sent a monetary offering to the notorious war-linked Yasukuni Shrine that honors 14 Class-A convicted war criminals.
Also, two groups of lawmakers visited the shrine early Tuesday with one group of junior, conservative Liberal Democratic Party members headed by known nationalist Tomomi Inada.
In the same statement, the DPRK body said textbooks which distorted the aggression war as "war of justice" and colonial rule over other nations as "cooperation and contribution" to the development and prosperity were finding their way to younger generation in Japan.
It also slammed those Japanese politicians who are busy reexamining the Kono statement, "which officially recognizes sexual slavery for the Imperial Japanese Army, in a bid to overturn truth about it though it was proved materially and its illegality was confirmed by the international law."
Former Japanese chief cabinet secretary Yohei Kono acknowledged in 1993 that the Japanese military was involved in recruiting women, notably Koreans, and coercing them into sex slavery or comfort women for Japanese soldiers before and during the Second World War.
