Japan Agrees to Make 2 of 35 Changes Asked

The Japanese government has agreed to change just two passages in controversial new middle school history textbooks, among 35 revisions demanded by the South Korean government, a Japanese NHK television broadcast reported Friday.

One correction concerns a description of the ancient Choson kingdom in a text published by Osaka Publishing Co. The other, in a book published by Tokyo Publishing Co., will correct a statement that the kingdoms of Shilla and Paekche paid tribute to Japan in A.D. 570.

The books, written by nationalist scholars, have drawn an outcry from China and Taiwan, as well as both Koreas and other countries who charge them with distorting history and whitewashing Imperial Japan's militarism.

Among the material found objectionable was an interpretation that Japanese colonization helped to modernize South Korea, and the omission of information about the 1937 Nanjing Massacre in China and the forced sexual slavery of Korean "comfort women" during World War II.

Japan's ambassador to South Korea, Terusuke Terada, will convey his government's official response on Monday to South Korea's Foreign Minister Han Seung-soo.

The government said it would convene an emergency meeting under Vice Minister Choi Sun-hee Saturday. Measures under consideration to punish Japan include possible South Korean opposition to granting Japan a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council and delaying the planned further opening of the domestic market to Japanese popular music.

"We will have to invest a great amount of time and energy into the matter," Mr. Han, who is in Europe, told a Yonhap News interviewer.

Reports from Tokyo said that the Japanese government would ask for voluntary, not mandatory, corrections to the two books. It reportedly found the publishers' offer to revise nine passages sufficient.

Seoul government dismissed that proposal this week, saying that "it lacked content," and amounted to mere "face-saving."

by Lee Chul-hee