By Park Yoon-bae
Staff Reporter

Seoul-Anti-Japanese sentiments in Korea are escalating amid Japan’s authorization of middle school history textbooks, which Koreans believe gloss over wartime atrocities committed by the Japanese imperialists.

Civic groups on April 4 held a series of rallies to strongly protest Tuesday’s approval of the textbooks by the Japanese Education Ministry.

The Korean Council for Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan criticizes the Japanese government for giving the controversial textbooks the green light.

Scores of council members staged a demonstration front of the Japanese Embassy in central Seoul, calling for the Japanese Education Ministry to retract its decision on the textbooks.

"The authorization of the textbooks constitutes a criminal act because Japan is trying to whitewash its past brutalities despite the fact that some of its victims are still alive," said the council in a statement.

The council criticized that five of their eight new Japanese history textbooks, which were written by right-wing scholars, failed to mention Korean and other Asian "comfort women," who were forced to serve as sex slaves to Japanese soldiers during World War II.

A coalition of 59 civic groups, including the council, launched a signature collection campaign to protest the approval of the textbooks, which will be distributed to schools next year.

The civic alliance said the collected signatures would be sent to Japan’s municipal and provincial authorities, which have the right to select textbooks, in order to pressure them not to use the books, in question.

Eight former comfort women joined the campaign.

"It is no doubt a historical fact that Japan mobilized Korean girls, forcing them to serve its soldiers as sex slaves during the colonial era," Shim Mi-ja, 78, former comfort woman said.

She urged the Japanese government to carry its past brutalities, including sex slavery, in school textbooks and to teach students historical facts without distortion.

About l4l former sex slaves are reported to be still alive in Korea.

It was estimated that as many as 200,000 Korean, Filipino and other Asian women had been mobilized as sex slaves in the l930s and l940s.

Some 500 members of a group advocating the sovereignty of the easternmost Tokdo islet on the East Sea, held a rally in Tapkol Park in downtown Seoul, slamming Japan for reviving its specter of imperialism and militarism.

Choi Jae-ik, head of the group, wrote phrases in his own blood, denounciing the textbooks which he claimed justifies Japan’s l9l0-45 colonial rule in Korea and past wrongdoings during the Pacific War.

The protesters marched through Chongno Street after the rally and delivered a letter of protest to the Japanese Embassy.

Labor unions belonging to the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) and the Federation of Korean Trade Unions (FKTU) also blasted Japan’s action over the textbook issue.

The Korea Federation of Teacher’s Association (KFTA) designated the week starting April l3, the founding day of the provisional Korean government in exile in Shanghai, as a special week for publicizing Japan’s bid to distort history.

The KFTA said that primary, middle and high schools would hold special classes on the issue during the week.

Some 200 students and teachers from Choongang High School plan to visit the Japanese Embassy on April l8 to protest the textbook approval.

The textbook dispute has rekindled anti- Japanese sentiment among Koreans. It is also feared to have escalated tensions over bilateral relations that had improved since President Kim Dae-jung visited Tokyo in l998.

Academics as well as ordinary citizens have expressed grave concern about the growing voice of rightists in Japan.

The newly-approved textbooks have come under fire for containing passages that justify Japan’s invasion of Asia in the early 20th century and whitewash atrocities such as the l937 Nanjing massacre.

The textbooks also emphasize the damage inflicted on Japan during World War II, which they describe as the "Great East Asian War."