The Japanese government has said it will apply its plan to provide tuition-free high school education to schools operated by pro-Pyongyang ethnic Koreans in Japan. One provincial government, however, is stirring up controversy by saying it would provide subsidies under certain conditions.

Japan’s Osaka Prefectural Government has demanded that the pro-North Korean schools drop the “Modern Korean History” subject from regular curriculum and make it an extracurricular subject, as it allegedly presents the Korean War and kidnapping of Japanese by North Korea differently from Japanese textbooks.

The city government gave a total of 13 conditions, including the severing of ties with Chongryeon, the pro-Pyeongyang federation of Korean residents in Japan.

The Osaka government says it has hired experts to check if the pro-North Korean schools in its jurisdiction follow Japanese textbook teaching guidelines. The city government added that it will deny the subsidies if its conditions are not met.

Although the Osaka government paid a total of 200 million yen to eleven pro-North Korean schools in 2009, it has been withholding the subsidy payments this year.