Lawmakers question cabinet on textbook issue

The National Assembly on Tuesday questioned cabinet members on the current controversy over Japanese history textbooks that gloss over Japan`s imperial past and wartime atrocities. Rep. Park Won-Hong of the Grand National Party (GNP) said the Tokyo government`s approval of the textbooks was tantamount to ``spiritual aggression`` and diplomatic provocation against Korea, China and Southeast Asian nations, calling on President Kim Dae-Jung to resolve the problem.

Rep. Kim Kyoung-Jae of the Millennium Democratic Party (MDP) suggested that the Seoul government oppose Japan`s bid for permanent membership on the United Nations Security Council, impose indefinite postponement of the Seoul meeting of the Korea-Japan inter-parliamentary union, shut down the Seoul branch of the rightist Sankei Shimbun newspaper and cancel the proposed visit to Korea of Japan`s Emperor Akihito.

Rep. Park Myoung-Hwan of the opposition party, who chairs the committee on unification, foreign affairs and trade, called for the formation of a select committee consisting of up to 20 lawmakers, and proposed that the joint declaration of 1998 on a Korea-Japan partnership and the Korea-Japan agreement of 1965 be scrapped and a boycott of Japanese products be launched.

Reps. Park Sang-Cheon of the ruling party, Yoo Heung-Su of the GNP and Cho Boo-Young of the United Liberal Democrats, who lead the bilateral inter-parliamentary group, together with a few members of the prayer breakfast fraternity of the National Assembly, left for Japan to lodge a formal protest against the textbook authorization. They are expected to demand the Japanese government and political leaders make a second revision of the contested books.

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Moon Chul fullmoon@donga.com