In Japan's most popular elementary school textbooks, it is written there that Dokdo is Japan's indigenous land. Also, with a bold statement, it is written that South Korea illegally occupies the islets. The materials in the textbooks display a map pointing an identifiable Japanese sea border around the islets. Incidentally, starting next year, they are going to add an expression that Japan is continuing to protest about Korea's illegal occupancy. The Japanese government's intention is plainly to feed into textbooks that Dokdo is a disputed area between Korea and Japan.

▲ The Japanese government is trying to make Dokdo as a dispute area.

In addition, these new textbooks minimized the history of interchange between Korea and Japan and glamorized Japan's war of aggression. They said Koreans were conscripted and were forced to do hard labor, but they subtracted the fact that the Japanese government was the main agent of this. Also, they did not mention Japan's responsibility of killing Korean and Chinese people when the Great Kanto earthquake happened. They are distorting history and showing the anti-Korean sentiment.

▲ They are distorting history and showing the anti-Korean sentiment.

The South Korean government is strongly denounced and urged to rescind it immediately. However, at a press conference, Japan's chief cabinet secretary said that they polemicized the test results based on Japan's position of the elementary school textbooks that South Korean and Chinese government denounced. He said that writing accurate information about Japan's history and territory is very important for Japnese children to understand easily. They also said that they want Korea and China to understand them.

▲ Japan said writing accurate information about Japan`s history is very important.

Korea and Japan have been doing territorial dispute since from long time ago. Especially, Japan, doing historical distortion to teach Japanese children wrong information, is making the children have the anti-Korean sentiment. However, Japan does not have any evidence or historical records of their opinion, unlike Korea. Japan has to stop distorting history and making a ridiculous claim about Dokdo.

April 6th, 2019
by Pyo Seung Hee