SEOUL, March 28 (Xinhua) -- South Korea on Tuesday expressed regret over Japan's history-distorting textbooks as it hinders the right perception of history in Japan's future generations.
The South Korean foreign ministry said in a statement that the government expresses deep regret over the Japanese government's approval of primary school textbooks following the unreasonable claims, which Japan has made for the past decades.
The ministry noted that it strongly protests, in particular, against Tokyo's approval of textbooks containing the unfair claims to Dokdo, called Takeshima in Japan, which the ministry said is the country's unique territory historically, geographically and according to international law.
Dokdo is a couple of rocky islets lying halfway between South Korea and Japan, which were forcibly incorporated into the Imperial Japan during its 1910-1945 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula.
South Korea restored its sovereignty over the islets after the peninsula's liberation from the colonization. Seoul has since maintained a small police detachment there.
The South Korean ministry also expressed strong regret over the Japanese textbooks, which changed the expression and description related to Japan's wartime forced mobilization of South Korean workers in a bid to dilute the nature of its coercion.
It added that the Japanese government should show more responsible behavior in educating its future generations while squarely facing history. ■