Hundreds of South Korean academics have declared they are boycotting the writing of state-issued history textbooks out of concern that they will contain distorted views on the country’s recent history.
South Korean President Park Geun-hye’s government plans to require middle and high schools to use textbooks edited by the government after 2017, instead of allowing schools to choose from eight private publishers, as is currently the case.
South Korea’s move toward state-issued textbooks is the latest in a series of efforts by conservative leaders in Seoul and Tokyo to shape school history books to reflect their political views, and has sparked fierce criticism from academics and opposition parties.
Photo: EPA
Professors from more than 20 South Korean universities said they would not contribute to the textbooks because they believe the government is moving to soften descriptions of South Korea’s brutal dictatorships that preceded a bloody transition toward democracy in the 1980s.
The Korean History Research Association, the country’s largest group of historians with nearly 800 members, has declared it will not participate in the writing process.
Opposition leader Moon Jae-in, who lost the 2002 presidential election to Park, said in a Facebook post yesterday that the directive to revert to state-issued textbooks signals an attempt at “beautifying” past dictatorships, and added that such textbooks would be “global embarrassments.”
In announcing the controversial plans on Monday last week, South Korean Education Minister Hwang Woo-yea said that the current history textbooks are too left-leaning and encourage views sympathetic to North Korea and urged for the need of school books that were “objective” and “balanced.”
The plan was to recruit professional historians to help write the new textbooks.
Lee Shincheol, a historian at Seoul’s Sungkyunkwan University and a contributing author of one of the current textbooks, said that the government’s criticism makes little sense because private publishers had been required to follow editorial guidelines set by the South Korean Ministry of Education, Science and Technology and have their content reviewed by a state-run history institution.
For the government to insist on full control over textbooks would eliminate academic freedom and result in politicized historical narratives, Lee said.
“Even Korea’s feudal monarchs had granted autonomy to royal chroniclers, but Park’s concept of history is more outdated than that of old kings,” he said.
Park defended the move toward state-issued textbooks by saying history classes must inspire “pride” in students for being South Korean citizens.
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