Schools for pro-Pyongyang ethnic Korean residents of Japan are reviewing their education system to make it more open and flexible in their attempt to shed an image of being shackled to North Korea.
Portraits of the late North Korean leader Kim Il Sung and his son, current leader Kim Jong Il, are no longer mandatory in classrooms, and neither are the hoisting of North Korea's flag and the singing of its national anthem, said officials of the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan (Chongryun).
In addition, textbooks in the next school year will undergo dramatic revisions, marking the first such change in about a decade.
History education in junior high grades, for example, previously focused on movements led by the elder Kim against Japan's 1910-1945 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula. But the revised textbooks will feature more descriptions of the history and culture of Korean residents of Japan.