Seoul, June 7 (ANI): South Korean publishers have reportedly been asked to remove examples of evolution from school textbooks.

The move came after the South Korean government passed along to publishers a petition organized by a pro-creationist group named 'the Society for Textbook Revise'.

The group petitioned to remove examples of the evolution of the horse and the ancestral Archaeopteryx bird, Nature reported.

The group also campaigning to cut any reference to the evolution of humans or Charles Darwin's theory of the origin of the species.

According to The New York Daily News, the group is connected to the Korea Association for Creation Research, the major force behind the pro-creationist movement in the country.

Dayk Jang, an evolutionary scientist at Seoul National University, said the main issue threatening evolutionary research in South Korea is the lack of debate in the academic sector.

Biologists were not consulted in the decision to revise textbooks, and there's little pushback from the scientific community against the anti-evolution movement, the report quoted Jang, as saying.

Meanwhile, the report said that religious beliefs are not the only reason roughly a third of South Koreans question the theory of evolution.

A 2009 survey cited found more than 40 percent of people didn't think there was enough scientific evidence to back the theory of evolution up. (ANI)