Education Commission of the DPRK Urges Japanese Authorities to Stop All Acts of Discriminating and Persecuting National Education of Chongryon

Pyongyang, April 24 (KCNA) -- A spokesperson for the Education Commission of the DPRK in a press statement Monday said the fierce April 24 education struggle waged in different parts of Japan in 1948 was the first united struggle of the Koreans in Japan against the U.S. and Japanese reactionaries' barbarous suppression of the right to national education.

Right after the liberation of Korea, the Koreans in Japan built over 500 Korean schools in different parts of Japan wherever Koreans lived, by dedicating strength, knowledge and money, proceeding from the single intention to retake spoken and written Korean languages and Korean history and culture that had been usurped by the Japanese imperialists, and instill the soul of the nation into their children, after receiving the speech of triumphal return made by President Kim Il Sung, the press statement said, and went on:

Considering the enforcement of national education by Koreans in Japan as a thorn in the flesh, the Japanese reactionary authorities announced "shutdown ordinance" of Korean schools in 1948, at the instigation of the U.S. imperialists. Enraged by this, Koreans in Japan formed the Measure Committee for Education of Koreans and turned out in the mass struggle to defend Korean schools.

The Japanese authorities can never get rid of the crimes of suppressing the sacred right to national education of Koreans in Japan after Japan's defeat in the war, instead of apologizing for their crimes to the Korean nation during the Japanese imperialist colonial rule.

Long time has passed since the April 24 education struggle, but the Japanese authorities remain unchanged in their hostile attitude to the democratic national education of Koreans in Japan, and have become all the more crafty and vicious than before.

No matter how frantic the Japanese authorities may go to scuttle the national education of Koreans in Japan, can they never stem nor stop the just struggle of Chongryon and Koreans in Japan who are tending the large flower garden of national education overflowing with virtue and feelings amid the special loving care shown by the socialist homeland and the active support by the people in the homeland.

Today the DPRK is demonstrating its might as a power, dignified with independence and self-respect, as it is led by the respected Comrade Kim Jong Un, and the Koreans in Japan are the eternal family members with the blood of the socialist homeland.

The Education Commission strongly urges the U.S. and the Japanese authorities to repent of and apologize for their brutal suppression of the just April 24 education struggle of Koreans in Japan, and the Japanese authorities to immediately stop all sorts of mean acts of discriminating and persecuting the national education of Chongryon. -0-

www.kcna.kp (Juche112.4.24.)