A South Korean historian has recently released photos which he says show Korean victims in Japan massacred by the Japanese in the immediate aftermath of the devastating Great Kanto Earthquake in 1923. This came just a few days after officials in Tokyo decided to remove references to the mass killing from high school textbooks.

A South Korean historian has recently released photos which he says show Korean victims in Japan massacred by the Japanese in the immediate aftermath of the devastating Great Kanto Earthquake in 1923.

Corpses piled up on the ground, dated September 1st, 1923. (pics of photos with exact date on them)

These are the graphic photos revealed by Jeong Seong-gil, a historian from South Korea's Keimyung University.

Jeong said he had not wanted to make them public because the images were too cruel and shameful. But Japanese officials' decision last month to remove references to the masscacre from textbooks changed his mind.

Jeong Seong-Gil, honorary director of Dongsan Medical Center Museum, Keimyuong Univ., said, "Those Koreans died in pain, even their bodies couldn't be kept whole. We must expose the brutal acts comitted by the Japanese in the past."

Japanese media on January 25th reported that education officials in Tokyo moved to replace the sentence "Many Koreans were massacred in the aftermath of the great earthquake," with "Tombstones commemerating Korean victims of the Great Kanto Earthquake read, 'Koreans lost their precious lives.'"

But South Korea's KBS news retorted that after the 1923 earthquake on September 1st, thousands of Koreans living in Japan were murdered, after being held accountable for the post-quake unrest. Japan had spread rumors that Koreans poisoned wells and committed arson and robbery. This fact was even written into a 2008 report about the earthquake by the Japanese government.

Go to Forum >>0 Comment(s)