On Aug. 29, 1910, Korea lost its sovereignty after being forced to sign an annexation agreement with imperial Japan and came under its colonial rule until 1945.
Japan's harsh colonial rule left deep scars on the hearts of Koreans. During the period, Koreans were banned from using their own language at schools and forced to adopt Japanese names. Hundreds of thousands of Koreans were also mobilized as forced laborers and sex slaves.
Though Wednesday marked the 102nd anniversary of colonization, the history is still vivid not in memory but as a stark reality as Tokyo continues to provoke Seoul as well as its neighboring countries by failing to look back on its wartime atrocities and repeating its unjustified territorial claims.
As the latest move, the upper house of the Japanese parliament is set to adopt a resolution late Wednesday to protest against South Korean President Lee Myung-bak's visit to its easternmost islets of Dokdo on Aug. 10 and his remarks on Japan's emperor demanding an apology for the past wrongdoings.
Japan has long laid claims to South Korea's rocky outcroppings of Dokdo in the East Sea in school textbooks, government reports and other ways, stoking enmity in South Korea against its former colonial ruler.
On Tuesday, a South Korean national museum disclosed some of the 19th and early 20th century Japanese school textbooks and world atlases showing that Japan perceived the islets of Dokdo as part of Korean territory at that time.
Following the resolution adopted by the Japanese House of Representatives last week, Seoul's foreign ministry issued a statement, which says South Korea "strongly protests the repeat of unjust claims to Dokdo, which is a Korean territory historically, geographically and under international law, and demands that they be withdrawn immediately."
As Japan tries to backtrack on its apologies over its colonial rule and enforced sexual servitude of Korean women for the wartime Japanese soldiers, the foreign affairs committee of South Korea's National Assembly adopted on Tuesday a resolution calling on Japan to shoulder due responsibility for its wartime atrocities, and a group of 163 civic groups and experts also urged Tokyo to make an apology and compensation. (Yonhap)