A committee comprising some 40 civic groups has launched to shed light on the massacre of thousands of Koreans in Japan during the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923.

Ahead of the 100th anniversary of the tragic event, the committee held a launch ceremony at the Korea Press Center in Seoul on Tuesday.

The group will organize academic conferences and exhibitions to uncover facts about the event, often referred to as the “Kanto Massacre.” It will also carry out field surveys and partner with lawmakers to enact a special law in an effort to restore the honor of the victims.

During the ceremony, the committee's co-chair, Lee Man-yeol, head of a local non-governmental organization, said that at the time of the incident, the Korean provisional government in Shanghai alerted the world about the massacre but was not in the position to hold anyone accountable or provide compensation. Lee said that 100 years have passed without knowing who died, where they were buried and where their families are.

Lee said the issue must be resolved before Seoul-Tokyo relations can improve.

Another co-chair, former lawmaker Lee Jong-kul, who now heads the Korean Council for Reconciliation and Cooperation, said there are moves in Japan to conceal or distort the event and stressed that favorable bilateral ties in the truest sense are only possible through an accurate account of history, reconciliation and forgiveness.

According to records compiled by South Korea’s first private newspaper, The Independent, more than six-thousand Koreans were killed in the Kanto region by Japanese police, soldiers and vigilantes after groundless rumors spread that they were poisoning wells and setting fires in the aftermath of a deadly earthquake on September 1, 1923.