The editorial referred to the uproar made by political and academic, media circles and personages of other circles over the final screening of the history textbook for higher schools on August 30.

The compilation of this textbook was spearheaded by Neo-conservative scholars who termed the existing textbook "left-inclined." The new book says that the Japanese imperialists began enforcing sexual slavery from 1944, the closing period of their colonial rule over Korea.

In the final analysis, the book downplays and distorts the earlier assertion of the academic circles that the Japanese imperialists committed the crime in real earnest right after the proclamation of the "state ordinance for general mobilization" late in the 1930s.

Moreover, it refers at length to the fact that the "May 16 military coup" staged by Park Chung-Hee was allegedly supported by broad public at that time.

On the contrary, the book in the part dealing with the May 18 Kwangju popular uprising does not mention the indiscriminate killing of civilians by puppet troops, the core point of the uprising, but simply describes the fact that some of the demonstrators were equipped with arms and occupied the provincial office and there were many casualties in this course and so on.

The book noted that there were more negative comments during the Kim Dae Jung and Roh Moo Hyun regimes than the Roh Tae Woo and Lee Myung Bak regimes. It went the lengths of referring to "the nuclear issue in the north" and "human rights issue in the north."

The editorial said all this was more biased than the controversial textbook in the early period of the Lee regime.