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“Even Korea’s feudal monarchs had granted autonomy to royal chroniclers, but Park’s concept of history is more outdated than that of old kings,” he said.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.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS