On October 12, the Park Geun-hye government announced its plan to reintroduce state-authored history textbooks for secondary school students, a controversial move that made a comeback 42 years after the authoritarian Park Chung-hee government published school history textbooks in April 1974. Such a plan invited a strong backlash from the opposition, progressive students and academics who claim that the “Park Geun-hye government has turned back the wheels of history.”
The Park Chung-hee government introduced state-published history textbooks in 1974 before it relinquished the power to private publishers in 2011. Under the Park Geun-hye government’s new plan, middle and high schools will teach from state-published history textbooks starting from 2017.
Some Third World nations, including North Korea and Bangladeshi, and only three (Turkey, Greece and Iceland) among the 34 OECD member nations use state-issued history textbooks around the globe.
“The government has decided to make new textbooks, called The Correct Textbook of History, with a view to imparting fact-based, well-balanced knowledge of modern history that cherishes constitutional values," Education Minister Hwang Woo-yea and Kim Jung-bae, President of the state-run National Institute of Korean History said at a press briefing on October 12.
The announcement came one year and eight months after President Park Geun-hye on February 13, 2014 asked officials from the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism to come up with measures to develop fact-based, unbiased history textbooks.
The New York Times’ editorial board last year ran an editorial titled ‘Politicians and Textbooks,’ which pointed out “Both Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan and President Park Geun-hye of South Korea are pushing to have high school history textbooks in their countries rewritten to reflect their political views. Mr. Abe is primarily concerned about the World War II era, and wants to shift the focus away from disgraceful chapters in that history.
Ms. Park is concerned about the portrayal of Japanese colonialism and the postcolonial South Korean dictatorships in history books. She wants to downplay Korean collaboration with the Japanese colonial authorities …….”
President Park has kept telling Japan to face up to its ugly past. President Park publicly sent a thinly-veiled message to the Abe government, saying: “A nation’s historical consciousness serves as a compass needle pointing to the future direction of the nation. Courage-- in the genuine sense-- is not about negating the past, but about facing up to history as it was and teaching undistorted historic facts to future generations.”
Calling the plan as an attempt to whitewash the acts of pro-Japanese collaborators and the postcolonial South Korean dictatorships, the opposition, academics and civic groups stoked protest movements and submitted an impeachment motion against Education Minister Hwang to the National Assembly.
Afraid of being labeled as puppets of the government, historians, both conservative and progressive, reportedly remain skeptical about participating in making state-issued history textbooks.
Thus, the state-run National Institute of Korean History hinted that scholars from other academic disciplines can be tasked with writing state history textbooks.
“We will make sure that the job of writing modern history will be carried out by (a government-appointed panel of) not only historians but also experts on politics, economics, society and culture,” said Kim Jung-bae, President of the National Institute of Korean History
As a matter of fact, President Kim Jung-bae was one of the leading academics who opposed the Park Chung-hee government’s 1973 move to use history textbooks issued by the state. “I am against standardizing school history textbooks,” Kim Jung-bae, who was a Korea University professor at that time, said publicly. He now has a change of heart and says, “At a time when ideologically-induced social controversies have escalated, it was inevitable for the government to switch to state-issued history textbooks.”
Kim Jae-chun, vice minister of education, was also one of the opponents of state-issued history textbooks. Kim Jae-chun wrote in his 2009 thesis that “Privately published history textbooks approved by an independent textbook review committee of experts carry more autonomy and creativity than state-authored history textbooks. The latter is a system that is used by dictatorships or underdeveloped countries.”
Less than two years ago, the ruling Saenuri Party also said in its 2013 policy report, “It goes against the principles of liberal democracy and could lead to glorifying the legacies of certain regimes.”
As the government went public with its plan to reintroduce state-authored history textbooks on October 12, descendants of independence fighters against Japan's colonial rule, civic groups and academics staged protests in downtown Seoul. Some college students held a surprise demonstration in front of the Statue of Admiral Yi Sun-Shin at Gwanghwamun Square and were hauled into the police station.
