Anti-Japanese sentiment sweeps through S. Korea

Anti-Japanese sentiment sweeps through S. Korea

SEOUL (Agencies): Anti-Japanese sentiment swept South Korea on
Tuesday after the government withdraw its ambassador to Tokyo
amid a mounting dispute over controversial history textbooks.

Amid calls for a boycott of Japanese goods, school teachers
organized special classes on Japan's wartime past which they have
accused Tokyo of erasing from the textbooks.

Analysts have warned the dispute could damage the cooperation
needed to stage the football World Cup 2002 finals which are
being jointly hosted by Seoul and Tokyo. World Cup organizers
have refused to comment on the most serious row between the rival
neighbors in several years.

Some 2,500 students from a Seoul elementary school staged a
march on Tuesday denouncing Japan, and effigies of a Japanese man
and the Rising Sun flag were burned in Seoul and other cities
during street protests.

The school children chanted "Don't tell lies!" and held
placards calling for a boycott on Japanese products.

"I'm proud of my students and their decision," said
schoolmaster Shin Won-Yong, standing near the parade of teenagers
waving South Korean flags and shouting condemnation of the
Japanese books.

Seoul also raised the textbook issue at the United Nations
council on human rights in Geneva on Monday.

Decades of strained relations between Japan and South Korea
began to improve in 1998, when Japan's late prime minister Keizo
Obuchi extended a written apology to President Kim Dae-jung.
Seoul responded by easing restrictions on importing Japanese
books, music and other cultural products.

The original draft of the book said Japan's occupation of
Korea from 1910 until the end of World War II was in line with
international law and described the Nanjing Massacre as being
"nothing on the scale of the Holocaust".

Following the panel's recommendation, the publishers revised
the section to make it clear that the annexation of Korea was
carried out by force.

It also took out the reference to the Nanjing Massacre, in
which China says an estimated 300,000 people died as Japanese
forces over ran the city in 1937.

South Korea's ambassador to Tokyo, Choi Sang-Ryong, was due
back in Seoul on Tuesday after the government recalled him to
show its anger over the books.

And a four-member parliamentary team led by Park Sang-Cheon of
the ruling Millennium Democratic Party was to fly to Japan
Tuesday afternoon to protest Tokyo's approval of the textbooks.

Tension

Amid the rising tensions, Park on Monday announced the
cancellation of an annual conference of the Korea-Japan
Parliamentarians' Union, which had been set for May 4-6 in Seoul.

China, North Korea and Taiwan have also angrily condemned the
school books that opponents say whitewash Japan's wartime record.

The Japanese government decided last week to approve the books
which avoid mention of Japan's pre-World War II invasion of its
Asian neighbors and the forced prostitution of tens of thousands
of women from Korea and other Asian nations for Japanese troops.

Recalling its envoy is the toughest action taken by the South
Korean government against Japan since President Kim came to
office in 1998 promising to seek "forward looking ties" with the
rival country.

Meanwhile, South Korean teachers hit back organizing special
classes on the books to be held at all South Korean schools this
week.

The classes would inform students of Japan's "distortions" of
history, said the Korean Federation of Teachers' Association, the
largest teachers' group.

Seoul newspapers predicted a cooling of Seoul-Tokyo ties
because of the dispute.

"We regret the Seoul-Tokyo relationship had to deteriorate to
this point," JoongAng Ilbo newspaper said in an editorial.
It defended the diplomatic move as "unavoidable action" but
warned: "It is possible that recalling ambassador Choi may spark
diplomatic discord."

But Yun Duck-Min, a professor at the Institute of Foreign
Affairs and National Security, said it would be "undesirable" for
relations to suffer so badly before the World Cup.

"The successful co-hosting of the World Cup is a promise to
the whole world," he said. "The textbook issue is not something
to be settled soon."

South Korea and Japan were jointly awarded the 2002 finals by
football's international governing body FIFA in a bid to end
their fierce rivalry to become the first Asian nation to stage
the world's biggest sporting event.