North Korea's revised science textbooks contain encyclopedia-style illustrations and questions intended to raise students' curiosity and interest, a study here showed Wednesday.

The Kim Jong-un regime changed the communist nation's school year system and revised textbooks in September 2012, citing the need for creative and practical education in the information and technology era, according to the Korea Institute for National Unification.

The state-funded think tank in Seoul examined the North's education policy, curricula and school textbooks and issued a report.

The North's new science textbooks are "in all colors and characteristic of using many colorful images," said Kang Ho-je, a researcher at the Institute for Far Eastern Studies at Kyungnam University. Kang was in charge of scrutinizing the North's textbooks in the report.

"With the textbooks containing more illustrations than text, it feels like reading an encyclopedia or a picture book," he said.

Especially, a number of real photographs have been used to show the North's natural ecosystems including rivers, mountains, flowers and trees.

Kang pointed out that the science textbooks are based on questions, not simply explaining concepts.

In case of the pine cone, the previous version reads it "is composed of many scales." But the new one says, "Let's find out how a pine cone looks."

At the end of each chapter, there is a "science writing" section.

For instance, students are asked to write about their thoughts on the satellite, car, bird or rabbit in the chapter's pictures.

Math textbooks also contain many graphs and images, said Kang. (Yonhap)