Anchor: In the wake of recent controversies surrounding Japan's new history textbooks, it has been confirmed that the island nation is distorting ancient Korean history as well. Japan’s Agency for Cultural Affairs this time changed details related to some Korean relics housed in the Tokyo National Museum in order to claim that the country ruled some parts of the Korean Peninsula in the ancient times. In response, Seoul’s Prime Minister warned Japan, saying that history will eventually be the judge.
Our Kim Bum-soo has more.
 
Report: Prime Minister Lee Wan-koo has issued a strong warning to Japan for its continued attempts to distort history.
 
Speaking to reporters on Thursday at the government complex in Seoul, the prime minister specifically targeted the Japanese Agency for Cultural Affairs for making distortions about ancient Korean history.
 
The Web site of the Japanese cultural heritage authority on Wednesday was found to have mislabeled the excavation sites of right relics from Korea’s Three Kingdoms era. Describing a gold crown, a sword decorated with a dragon and a wing-shaped crown ornament from Changnyeong, South Gyeongsang Province in South Korea, the Japanese agency falsely claimed that they were excavated from the Imna region of Korea.
 
The South Korean prime minister noted media reports about Tokyo’s apparent promotion of the ‘theory of Imna Nihon-fu,’ which argues that the island country established a military outpost in the Imna region in the ancient Korean kingdom of Gaya and ruled over the territory from the fourth to the sixth century.
 
Calling the assertions groundless, the prime minister warned that Tokyo cannot cover up undeniable facts and will eventually face the judgment of history.
 
Lee also called for a fact-based, objective and prudent approach to Japan's distortion of history for the sake of bilateral relations and future generations. He then asked the education ministry to research the issue and devise measures to shed clear light on the false claim.

The theory of Imna has been widely rejected among Korean and Japanese scholars.

The Korean artifacts are parts of the so called the the Ogura Collection, about one thousand works of art, donated to the Tokyo National Museum in 1981. At least 34 of the artifacts had been smuggled out of Korea during the colonial era.
Kim Bum-soo, KBS World Radio News.