SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea said on Monday that beginning in 2017, its middle and high school students would be taught history from government-issued textbooks, prompting criticism that President Park Geun-hye’s conservative government was returning education to the country’s authoritarian past.

The administrative directive to wrest control over history textbooks from private publishers came after months of heated public debate over how to teach children history. The controversy has focused largely on how to characterize the history of modern Korea, including Japan’s colonial rule in the early 20th century and South Korea’s tumultuous, often bloody march toward democracy.

For years, conservative critics have charged that left-leaning authors poisoned the current textbooks and students’ minds with their “ideological biases.” The critics were especially upset with the way the textbooks described North Korea and the military dictators who once ruled South Korea, including Ms. Park’s father, Park Chung-hee, who seized power in a 1961 coup and remained in control using torture and martial law until 1979.

But opponents of Ms. Park, including some civic groups and regional education leaders, vowed to protest the government’s move, which they said would embarrass the country globally by creating a textbook system similar to the one in North Korea.