PYONGYANG (Kyodo) North Koreans who were victims of Japan's 1910-1945 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula and relatives of deceased victims called Thursday for Tokyo's "immediate apology and compensation" for their sufferings from forced labor, sexual servitude and the 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
"All victims, bereaved families and the people in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea strongly protest against the Japanese government for persistently avoiding settling hideous crimes" committed by Japan, they said in a letter addressed to the Japanese government, which was adopted at a meeting in Pyongyang.
It will be the first time in six years that a group of victims in North Korea has sent such a letter to Japan.