South Korea has pushed ahead with a highly controversial plan to introduce government-issued history textbooks in schools, despite angry protests by opposition parties and academics.



The policy has become a bitter ideological battleground between left and right in South Korea, with the government claiming the changes are necessary to correct a “pro-North Korean” bias. Critics have accused president Park Geun-Hye’s administration of seeking to manipulate and distort the narrative of how the South Korean state was created.

Following an obligatory 20-day period to canvass public opinion, prime minister Hwang Kyo-Ahn and education minister Hwang Woo-Yea confirmed that from 2017 middle and high school students would each receive a single government-issued history textbook.

“We cannot teach our children with biased history textbooks,” Hwang said in a televised statement.

Although the textbooks cover ancient history, it is the interpretation of the country’s turbulent recent past, which is most contested – not least the autocratic rule and legacy of Park’s father, Park Chung-Hee.

It was Park Chung-Hee who introduced state-issued textbooks in 1973, a system that survived the country’s transition from military to democratic rule.

In 2003, the system was relaxed with the introduction of privately published textbooks, which then became the norm from 2010, although they were still subject to state inspection.

Park’s conservative administration argued that the books had taken on an increasingly liberal, leftwing bias, which some have even labelled as “pro-North Korean”.

Battleground with multiple fronts

Arguments have focused on issues such as who bears most responsibility for the outbreak of the 1950-53 Korean war, and how the textbooks should reference North Korea’s official “juche” ideology.

Deeply sensitive issues such as collaboration during Japan’s 1910-45 colonial rule are also strongly contested, as well as the violence that accompanied the move to democracy in the 1980s and 90s.

Hwang dismissed “ the concerns that state-issued textbooks would glorify the authoritarian, military rule of the past as groundless. “This society is too mature to allow ... such an attempt to distort history,” he said.

A vocal coalition of liberal politicians, academics, students and civic groups disagree, however. There have also been large street demonstrations against the new policy.

The main opposition New Politics Alliance for Democracy (NPAD) staged a sit-in protest at the National Assembly overnight, before Tuesday’s announcement.

The NPAD chief, Moon Jae-In, said the government had turned a deaf ear to mounting public opposition. “This is no less than outright dictatorship,” he added. “No free democracy in the world has state-issued history textbooks.”

An opinion poll published last week by Gallup Korea showed that 49% of Korean adults were against the policy, with 36% in favour.

The state-issued history textbooks will be written by a government-appointed panel of teachers and academics.

Park Geun-Hye has stated that the most critical role of historical education is to “instil our future generation with pride in their country”.

Her critics accuse her of hypocrisy in light of her own condemnation of Japanese historical revisionism regarding the colonial period.