hankyoreh

The new history textbooks that will be used in Korean high schools starting next year. (Yonhap)

At a time of heightened interest in how textbooks portray Korean history amid heated debates over the history itself, the results of an official evaluation of new history textbooks have been made public. Among the texts approved for use in schools are high school history textbooks by the Korea Institute of Learning Evaluation (KILE), which passed the review for the first time. 

Critics of the textbooks claim they have a startling lack of descriptions and explanations about the sexual slavery of the Japanese imperial army’s system of “comfort women.” They also point to the text’s description of the rule of Syngman Rhee not as a “dictatorship” but as a “long-term possession of power.”

Seven history textbooks for middle school students and nine history texts for high school will be put into circulation in March of next year, according to the 2022 revisions to public school curricula. All the new texts passed official evaluations. On Friday, the Hankyoreh compared the content of the Korea Institute of Learning Evaluation’s “Korean History 2” high school textbook — which spans the period of Japanese occupation to the present — to editions that came before it. 

According to the Ministry of Education’s standards for middle school and high school history textbooks, sufficient descriptions about the comfort women system are mandatory. The Education Ministry refers to these standards as “standard-level elements for academic achievement.”  

In its description of the “comfort women,” the KILE text states, “Young women were taken to places like China and Southeast Asia and forced to live terrible lives.” The text offers practice questions under the subtitle, “Let’s discuss why we should never forget the Japanese imperial army’s comfort women practices.” The previous text provided by Donga Publishing elaborates on the concept of “comfort women,” lists the main responsible parties, and describes the Japanese government’s denial of history and the various changes in its official stance regarding the comfort women issue. The KILE text’s content on such matters is comparatively minimal. 

The text published by Liber School contains additional student exercises concerning the forced mobilization of the comfort women and lists all public statements from Japanese prime ministers that distort the history of the comfort women. It also contains an exercise that asks students to write their own public statements on the issue. 

A high school history teacher who asked not to be identified by name remarked, “Because they’re for children, other books also do not contain direct and descriptive language on the sexual exploitation that occurred. However, the new text does not contain any additional exercises or documentation regarding such practices, and its content on the subject is comparatively lacking.”

A photo of Syngman Rhee appears at the forefront of a section on seven figures who influenced the course of modern Korean history after the country’s liberation from Japan. The text states, “After liberation, he formed the Central Council for Rapid Realization of Korean Independence and called for the formation of a provisional government in South Korea, opposing the formation of a trusteeship or rule by a consortium.” In a subsection titled, “Exploring Further,” the text encourages students to write about the historical backdrop of Rhee’s 1946 statement at Jeongeup in South Jeolla Province, where he advocated for the establishment of a single government in South Korea. 

“If Syngman Rhee had not called for an independent South Korean government, what do you think would have happened?” the text asks. This question is part of a section that asks the student, “Let’s explore the reason why Syngman Rhee called for an independent South Korean government instead of a unified [Korean] government.” 

Moreover, the KILE text uses the phrase “long-term possession of power” to describe Rhee’s rule, which differs markedly from descriptions used in other texts like “dictatorship,” (Hainaim Education) “the formation of a dictator’s authority” (Mirae N), and “long-term dictatorship” (C Mass).

In a passage about the formation of the Republic of Korea government, the text uses the phrase “liberal democracy” instead of “democracy.” This also differs from preceding texts. All these revisions were made after the 2022 curricula revisions made under the Yoon Suk-yeol administration. At the time, when the Ministry of Education unilaterally pushed for using the term “liberal democracy,” the research team who worked on the text opposed the move, saying the phrase “narrowed the range of diversity and inclusivity inherent to the idea of democracy.” 

“Subjects of considerable controversy are part of student exercises titled ‘Exploring Further’ or ‘Exploring History.’ I’m worried that students will develop a distorted view of history, depending on how their teachers employ the text to push them toward certain views,” said another high school history teacher who declined to be named. 

By Shin So-yoon, staff reporter; Lee Woo-yun, staff reporter

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