SEOUL - Seoul strongly denounced Tokyo at a U.N. human rights conference in Geneva, April 9, for authorizing history textbooks aimed at glossing over its war of aggression and brutal colonial rule.

During a women’s rights session at the Human Rights Commission, Korean Ambassador to Geneva Chung Eui-young raised the issue of comfort women, which refer to Korean women forced to work as sex slaves for Japanese imperial troops. Most Japanese middle school textbooks deleted references to the atrocities against women in an apparent attempt to cover up past wrongdoings.

"However, given the recent outcome of Japanese history textbook screenings, we cannot but express our indignation at the fact that some of these books, which have passed screenings, conceal or abridge Japan’s past wrongdoings by distorting or altogether failing to mention the issue of comfort women," he said.

It is the first time that the Korean government officially took issue with the comfort women case since 1998.

Ambassador Chung went on to say, "My government strongly urges the Japanese government to take appropriate measures to rectify the problem of distortion and omission of this issue and to eliminate and prevent, once and for all, such distortion of history on the basis of historical prospective, proclaimed in the said declaration."

By the said declaration, Chung refers to the 1998 Joint Declaration on a New Korea-Japan Partnership in which Tokyo expressed regrets for past wrongdoings.

Officials here said that the Japanese government’s authorization of controversial textbooks conflicts with its declared policies on its past behavior.

So far, the Seoul government has refrained from raising the comfort women issue at an international level because it reached the judgment that the issue was closed with the 1998 declaration.

"In adopting this broad-minded position, we expected that the Japanese government would demonstrate sincere contrition, make every effort to prevent such gross human rights violations as the use of comfort women from recurring, and take necessary measures to relay truthful, historical facts in the education of young generations," the ambassador said.

Meanwhile, Deputy Premier-Education Minister Han Wan-sang is set to head an inter-ministerial taskforce aimed at setting up measures to cope with the issue, another official said. The task force also comprises officials from the Foreign Affairs-Trade and Culture-Tourism Ministries, the Office for Government Policy Coordination and Chong Wa Dae.