Korean cyber protest downs Japanese websites

A demonstration Saturday by Korean Internet surfers over distortions of history in Japanese textbooks caused access troubles or shut down the servers of Japan`s Ministry of Education and Science, the Sankei Shimbun newspaper, Liberal Democratic Party, Tsukurukai and Hokkaido council among others.

Some of the Japanese sites returned to normal between 9 a.m. and noon, shortly after they malfunctioned, but access to most of the homepages was disrupted frequently during the day as the number of Korean netizens clicking on the pages increased.

The site of Fusoosa, a publisher of history textbooks, worked until 10:20 a.m. when surfers were shown a message reading ``No pages.`` Experts analyzed that the company temporarily closed its site to foil the Korean cyber demonstration.

In messages posted on donga.com`s bulletin board, some netizens said that the Cheong Wa Dae homepage was downed by hackers, but the presidential office said the system was taken offline for two hours to replace the server.

Sankei Shimbun reported in its Internet edition that access was much higher than normal on the homepages of the Ministry of Education and Science, Sankei Shimbun, Tsukurukai, Liberal Democratic Party and Hokkaido council since Saturday morning and that the sites were not working normally.

The Japanese daily said that access began to increase on the Ministry of Education and Science homepage from 9 a.m. Although no damage to data was reported, the ministry was monitoring the server through a private expert for 24 hours.