Korean and Japanese academics have launched a joint study into the shared history of both countries.

Members of a Korea-Japan joint history research committee held a full session in Tokyo Sunday and established a sub-committee on history textbooks for the first time to develop a joint perspective on history.

The committee is seeking a new way to look at the history of the two nations, which is often described by words such as repression and resistance.

The territorial dispute over the Dokdo islets will not be included in the research.

Seoul and Tokyo launched the committee in 2002 under a bilateral summit agreement after a dispute over Japan's alleged distortion of history in school textbooks.