Flowers are laid at a memorial stone set up at a park in Tokyo to remember the Korean victims killed in the wake of the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake, Sept. 1. Yonhap

North Korea on Monday denounced Tokyo's claim that it is difficult to verify the massacre of Koreans in the wake of the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake as "desperate efforts to erase its blood-stained past history."

Historians say up to 6,000 Koreans were killed in the aftermath of the magnitude 7.9 earthquake that devastated Tokyo, Yokohama and surrounding prefectures. The massacre began as the Japanese government spread rumors of a planned riot by Koreans in a scheme to divert public attention from social unrest.

But Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary, Hirokazu Matsuno, was quoted as saying in a parliamentary committee meeting last week that it is difficult to get down to the truth at the moment as there are no court records, according to Japanese media reports.

"This is an intolerable insult to the victims and their bereaved families and a shameless act to evade the state responsibility for the hideous crimes against humanity," Kim Sol-hwa, a researcher of the North's Institute for Japan Studies associated with its foreign ministry, said in a statement carried by the Korean Central News Agency.

Kim blamed worsening North Korea-Japan relations on Tokyo, saying that Japan has "no sense of guilt about the past crimes" and is "ignorant of elementary human ethics and morality."

"Japan is making desperate efforts to erase its blood-stained past history," the researcher said in the English-language statement. "This is a clear proof of its will to repeat the history of aggression." (Yonhap)