At the same time, it is a pressing issue which will judge whether Japan is qualified to become a full-fledged member of the international community or not. It is also an important issue that must be settled for the sake of Japan itself. This notwithstanding, the Japanese authorities refuse to honestly reflect on the damage it has inflicted on the Korean people. It is foolish of them to attemp to whitewash and distort their bloodstained history of aggression. This is another crime of the Japanese rulers.
History can be neither hidden nor tampered with.
The insult a nation suffers from another nation and its pride impaired by the latter do not fade from its memory with the passage of time. Due to Japan's failure to erase the disgrace of a criminal state in the 20th century and its failure to rectify its evil conscience, its crimes have snowballed generation after generation. In the long run, its new generation has to pay the long-standing debt plus the debt that the previous generations failed to pay off. Though a generation is replaced by another and a new century arrives at the end of the old one, Japan cannot shy away from its legal and moral obligations to make a thorough-going apology and proper compensations to the Korean people for all of its past crimes. The world conscience sees moral inferiority of Japan in what Germany and Italy have done to liquidate the fascist crimes they committed against humanity in the past.