A negative image of North Korea appears to have been included in a Russian history textbook approved by Moscow's education ministry this year.

According to the Yonhap News Agency an 11th grade history text to be introduced in this year's new semester was compiled by three professors at Moscow State University and contains details of the Kim Il-sung regime during the 1960s and 70s as well as Kim Jong-il's nuclear weapons programs.

This is the first time a Russian textbook has mentioned such details and perhaps shows that Russia, which only recently emerged from behind the Iron Curtain of Cold War communism, is changing its attitude towards Pyongyang.

The textbook says that there is no political freedom in North Korea as it is a totalitarian regime and that the country's mass media which constantly praises the leadership is strictly censored.

The text also states that the 23 million people of North Korea live in relative poverty and are economically and ideologically isolated from the outside world. It also describes current situations involving the North, including details of Pyongyang's withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the United Nations Security Council's adoption of a resolution criticizing North Korea's underground nuclear test in 2006.

In contrast to its negative portrait of the North, the book presents South Korea's economic and industrial development as admirable.