North Korea has called Japan a "political dwarf" and denounced what it said were gross distortions in a new Japanese school textbook as it joined South Korea and China in the feud with Tokyo.
Both Beijing and Seoul have attacked last week's decision by the Japanese government to approve the history book for use, saying that it whitewashes crimes committed by Imperial Japanese forces in the 1930s and 1940s.
Pyongyang Foreign Ministry spokesman
"The textbooks grossly distorted . . . and beautified the Japanese imperialists' military aggression and colonial rule over Korea in such a manner as to claim that they advanced into the Korean peninsula for the self-defence of Japan and helped Korea in its modernisation," the Pyongyang Foreign Ministry spokesman said on Tuesday.
In a statement carried by the official KCNA news agency, the spokesman also complained the textbook left out Japan's war crimes against Koreans and Chinese.
"This is a grave insult to the peoples of Korea and the rest of Asia, who suffered all sorts of misfortune and pain due to the Japanese imperialists' policy [of] aggression in the past," he said.
"This betrays philistinism peculiar to Japan, a vulgar and shameless political dwarf."
Earlier on Tuesday, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao told Japan to "face up to history" after thousands of Chinese protesters took to the streets at the weekend, burning the Japanese flag, attacking Japanese businesses and breaking windows at the Japanese embassy in Beijing.
South Korea, also angered by a territorial row with Japan over a group of islands off its east coast, said recently it was ready for a "diplomatic war" with Japan.