S Korean scholars boycott state’s textbook project
SEOUL: Hundreds of South Korean scholars have declared they are boycotting the writing of state-issued history textbooks out of concern that they will teach distorted views on the country’s recent past. Conservative 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 stateissued 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.
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 won’t participate in the writing process.
Kang Sun-a, a spokeswoman of the opposition New Politics Alliance for Democracy, said that the directive to revert to state-issued history textbooks has “instantly taken the country back to the Cold War period.” In announcing the controversial plans on Monday, Education Minister Hwang Woo-yea
argued 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.
Before leaving for her current trip to the United States, Park defended the move toward state-issued textbooks by saying history classes must inspire “pride” in students for being South Korean citizens. Park is the daughter of slain military dictator Park Chung-hee, who ruled South Korea in the 1960s and 70s, and whose legacy as a successful economic strategist is marred by brutal records of civilian oppression.
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 Education Ministry 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.
“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,” Lee said.
The government of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe also in recent years has been criticized for trying to influence textbooks for political purposes. Japan’s Education Ministry last year introduced a textbook screening policy that required private publishers reflect the government’s official position on contentious issues in modern history to “balance out” references to Japan’s wartime aggression. Lee argued that the step taken by Park’s government might be even more regressive, pointing out that Japan hasn’t been using state-issued textbooks since the end of World War II. — AP