The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) on Tuesday strongly condemned the Japanese government's sanction of a history textbook which critics say distorts history and gloss over the war crimes Japanese troops committed in the first half of last century.

"This is an intolerable insult to the Korean nation demanding Japan liquidate its past and an open challenge to international justice and conscience," said the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) in a commentary.

"History can never be changed by any distortion nor be erased by any attempt to cover it up," the commentary added.

The Japanese Education Ministry last Tuesday approved a new edition of a junior high school history textbook compiled by a right-wing organization, which eulogizes Japan's aggression and harsh colonial rule in the Korean peninsula, China and South East Asia.

The KCNA also fumed about the textbook's assertion that Japan's colonization of the Korean Peninsula helped its modernization process and its labeling of the Tok islets as part of the Japanese territory.

The article said the new textbook does not mention the enormous suffering Japanese militarists had inflicted on the Korean people during its 1910-1945 colonial rule, when 8.4 million Koreans became forced laborers and 200,000 Korean women were forced into sex slavery by Japanese troops.

The Tok islets, located halfway between Japan and the Korean Peninsula, have been claimed by South Korea, Japan and the DPRK since the end of World War II.

"Japan's recent move of saying nothing of its design to cover up its past crimes and evade the redemption of its past crimes, laid bare its militarist ambition for re-invasion of Korea and other Asian countries," the commentary said.

"Lurking behind such a move is the persistent and sinister intention of the Japanese reactionaries to arm their descendants with the reactionary idea of aggression through the education in the distorted history and woo them to follow in the footsteps of their ancestors and go out for re-invasion," the commentary said.

"Through this, Japan seeks to realize the old dream of 'Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere' at any cost," it said.

"The Korean people will never tolerate the Japanese reactionaries' distortion of history but certainly force them to pay for all its past crimes," the commentary said.