Pyongyang, March 4 (KCNA) -- Japan, an island country, regarded overseas aggression as the best way to survive and develop, and made desperate efforts to this end.

Japan began switching to military feudal capitalism occasioned by "the 1868 Meiji Restoration", known as bourgeois reform in its history, and advocated a brigandish "theory of the conquest of Korea" which means conquering Korea by armed forces.

Under this belligerent theory, the Japanese aggressors embarked on the road of military invasion of Korea and fabricated the "Unyo-maru" incident in 1875. This was a deliberate provocative plot aimed at making an excuse for an armed invasion of Korea.

In May and September of that year, Japan made the "Unyo-maru" trespass on the coastal waters of Korea under the pretexts of a shelling drill and "sea-route sounding". Its aim was to invent an excuse for forcing the Korean feudal government to conclude an unequal treaty with Japan.

Enraged by the acts of committing various military espionage against Korea and the atrocities of attacking defenseless areas and killing many innocent inhabitants, the Korean guards opened fire on the aggressors.

Availing themselves of the opportunity, the Japanese aggressors asserted that the Korean side conducted an act of hostility towards Japan, and then started an open armed intervention. They threatened and blackmailed the Korean feudal government with cannons and warships and enforced the conclusion of an aggressive and subordinate unequal treaty on it in February the following year.

Japan stipulated the extraterritorial rights in the treaty. In this way, it provided a legal guarantee for committing all sorts of criminal acts, including aggression and plunder, at will, irrespective of the law of the Korean feudal state. On this basis, it could stretch out its tentacles of aggression deep into Korea in political, economic, military and other fields.

The "Unyo-maru" incident was a prelude to Japan's armed invasion of Korea. -0-