The number of Koreans killed by the Japanese in a massacre following the great Kanto earthquake in 1923 is reportedly three times higher than previously estimated.

Japan's Sankei Shimbun daily quoted Japanese teachers as saying that about 66-hundred Koreans were killed in the post-quake massacre. The figure was disclosed during a national conference of the Japanese teachers' union on Sunday.

The figure is about three times higher than the 25-hundred claimed by Japan.

The paper also said that many Japanese primary and high school textbooks set the number of Korean victims at around six to seven thousand.

After the quake, which killed more than 90-thousand people in 1923, a mass murder of Koreans was conducted due to a rumor that Koreans were attempting to capitalize on the situation.