SEOUL, April 19 (Xinhua) -- South Korea on Friday rapped Japan for authorizing middle school textbooks that distort colonial history and lay territorial claims to disputed islets, called Dokdo here and Takeshima in Japan.
Seoul's foreign ministry said in a statement that the South Korean government expresses deep regret over Japan's authorization earlier in the day of middle school textbooks containing preposterous claims over Dokdo.
The ministry noted that the textbooks also contain absurd and false accounts regarding the issues of sexual slavery victims, forced labor victims and Japan's colonial rule, urging Tokyo to make an immediate correction.
Dokdo is a couple of rocky outcroppings lying halfway between the two countries, which were forcibly incorporated into Imperial Japan during its 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula.
South Korea restored its sovereignty over the islets after the peninsula's liberation from colonization. Seoul has since maintained a small police detachment there.
South Korea said it strongly protests against Japan's renewed authorization of textbooks containing preposterous claims to Dokdo that is clearly an integral part of South Korea's territory historically, geographically and under international law.
South Koreans have seen Japan's territorial claims over the islets as its denial of colonial history.
The ministry emphasized that Japan's authorization of textbooks full of content that glorifies Japan's past mistakes, rather than apologizing for and repenting of them, not only runs counter to the trend of improving bilateral relations but also is an irresponsible act of allowing the education of distorted historical perspectives to the young generation.
Hundreds of thousands of Korean people were forced, kidnapped or duped into sexual servitude for Japan's military brothels and forced labor for Japan's arms manufacturers during the Pacific War.
The ministry added that South Korea is deeply concerned over the prejudice that Japan's young generation may come to have if and when they are exposed to such biased and distorted education of history, hoping that Japan would squarely face its past history and take a more responsible attitude in educating the young generation. ■
