The problem the South Korean government is trying to address with leftist history textbooks being used to teach students could have unattended consequences. At some point the Korean left is going to regain the presidency and this will set the precedent that will allow them to put their own mandated changes in the history textbooks:
A civic group stages a rally in front of the Education Ministry in Sejong City on Wednesday to protest the government’s plan to take back control over history textbooks.[NEWSIS]The presidential office and the ruling party continued on Wednesday to push a plan for the government to take control of history textbooks from private publishers, which the opposition vowed to oppose.
“President Park Geun-hye has openly showed concerns about the overall problems in Korean history education,” an official at the Blue House said on Wednesday.
He said Park issued an order to the Ministry of Education February last year to come up with a way to end distortions of historical fact and ideological biases in classrooms, including the development of new history textbooks with balanced views.
The ruling Saenuri Party announced its support for the government to take control over history textbooks for middle and high school students from private publishers.
“Current history textbooks are pushing the students deeper into a sense of defeat and making them citizens who blame everything on the society and the country,” Saenuri Chairman Kim Moo-sung said Wednesday in his speech at the World Korean Community Leaders Convention. “The most important mission for us is guiding the future generation to challenge the world with positive minds and creative thinking and develop Korea into the world’s 10th largest economy. To realize this goal, history textbooks must be published by the government.”
Currently, eight publishers develop and supply Korean history textbooks for middle and high schools. The ruling party complained over the past few years that seven of them were leaning far too left, giving biased history to the nation’s youngsters.
During a Saenuri Party senior leaders’ meeting Wednesday morning, the need to change the current history textbook system was addressed by several participants.
“History textbooks for middle and high schools, regardless of their publishers, are written consistently with an anti-Korean view that denies our history,” Chairman Kim said. “It appears to be an attempt to teach people’s revolution to the students based on a leftist world view.”
Kim also criticized specific textbooks, saying they justify the Juche, or self-reliance, ideology of the late North Korean founder Kim Il Sung(1912-1994). [Joong Ang Ilbo]
You can read the rest at the link, but the glorifying of North Korea in these textbooks if true needs to stop. These textbooks are hold overs from the Sunshine Policy years where leftist teachers were able to get pro-North Korean textbooks into the schools. Today the Sunshine Policy and its leftist supporters have been greatly discredited, but the books still remain in the schools which is what the Park administration is trying to address now.
If anyone wants to consider what can happen when a government takes over the writing of history, read Orwell’s book, 1984. The protagonist of the book, Winston Smith, works for the government’s ministry of information. His job is to rewrite history to suit the government’s tastes at any given moment.
As for the history of the ROK-DPRK conflict, I don’t understand how anyone could look at the current situation and see this as a positive outcome of Kim Il-sung’s Juche philosophy. If Juche had worked, then how is it that North Korea depends upon international aid and illicit trade in order to scrape by, while South Korea, who has embraced the opposite of Juche, is an industrial powerhouse and economic player on the world stage?
The textbooks can contain any fabricated history, but the actual situation doesn’t match up with the distorted “facts” being presented in those books. Ultimately the truth finds a way to creep back in. North Korea, with all of its restrictions on information coming in from the outside world, has not been able to stop the flow of information from the outside. Slanted textbooks released in South Korea, a relatively open society for information exchange, won’t hold up to scrutiny. Education and critical thinking skills prized in most democratic societies have a tendency to prevent that kind of nonsense from getting too far out of hand.
Bruce, it has always amazed me how these leftist groups in South Korea can continue to support the Kim regime despite all the overwhelming evidence otherwise. The North Koreans live in an information controlled Orwellian society which explains their support of the regime, but the leftists in the ROK have no excuse. Many of them though blame the US for North Korea’s current situation. Many of the leftists believe if the US did not have the sanctions and military threat in place that Juche would work.
If anyone wants to consider what can happen when a government takes over the writing of history, read Orwell’s book, 1984. The protagonist of the book, Winston Smith, works for the government’s ministry of information. His job is to rewrite history to suit the government’s tastes at any given moment.
As for the history of the ROK-DPRK conflict, I don’t understand how anyone could look at the current situation and see this as a positive outcome of Kim Il-sung’s Juche philosophy. If Juche had worked, then how is it that North Korea depends upon international aid and illicit trade in order to scrape by, while South Korea, who has embraced the opposite of Juche, is an industrial powerhouse and economic player on the world stage?
The textbooks can contain any fabricated history, but the actual situation doesn’t match up with the distorted “facts” being presented in those books. Ultimately the truth finds a way to creep back in. North Korea, with all of its restrictions on information coming in from the outside world, has not been able to stop the flow of information from the outside. Slanted textbooks released in South Korea, a relatively open society for information exchange, won’t hold up to scrutiny. Education and critical thinking skills prized in most democratic societies have a tendency to prevent that kind of nonsense from getting too far out of hand.
Bruce, it has always amazed me how these leftist groups in South Korea can continue to support the Kim regime despite all the overwhelming evidence otherwise. The North Koreans live in an information controlled Orwellian society which explains their support of the regime, but the leftists in the ROK have no excuse. Many of them though blame the US for North Korea’s current situation. Many of the leftists believe if the US did not have the sanctions and military threat in place that Juche would work.