PYONGYANG, April 3 (Xinhua) -- The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) on Tuesday lashed out at Japan for distortion of history textbooks, calling Japan's moves an open mockery and challenge to its neighbors and the world at large.

    The Japanese authorities had become "all the more undisguised in their moves to distort history despite unanimous censure and condemnation by the public at home and abroad" the official KCNA news agency reported, quoting a Foreign Ministry statement.

    Japan's renewed total denial of the history of aggression is an open mockery and challenge to its neighbors and the international community demanding justice and truth, it said.

    The report said the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology gave an instruction on March 30 to delete or rewrite the part in high school history textbooks dealing with crimes committed by the Japanese military against humanity in the invasion war, including the setting up of "comfort centers" at Japanese army units.

    It added that the incumbent Japanese government's falsification of the stark historical facts is designed to repeat the country's crime-woven history at any cost.