Political debate is brewing as the ruling camp appears to be entertaining the idea of expanding state-published history textbooks to middle and high schools.

Education Minister Hwang Woo-yea was quoted as saying Wednesday that the government has not ruled out establishing a body responsible for the publication of Korean history textbooks.

“History should be taught in a consistent manner in classrooms so as not to create division amongst the people,” Hwang said in an interview with Yonhap News.

The minister’s remarks tailed similar comments made by ruling Saenuri Party chairman Rep. Kim Moo-sung, who said during his U.S. trip last week that his party would push for all schools to use government-published textbooks to address what they consider to be a “biased view” imposed by some private publishers’ progressive textbooks. “I think that left-wing flanks have a wrong sense of history and they are trying to instill their biased view in the young people who will lead our country,” Kim had said.

Currently, eight private publishing companies print history textbooks for middle and high schools after getting approval from the government. The schools then can choose any of the eight publishers’ textbooks. Elementary schools have been using state-authorized history textbooks throughout.

Hwang said the government could set up a body to publish Korean history textbooks, if necessary. And the body would select the writers of the history textbooks and a separate deliberation committee would review their contents to see if they are fit to print, according to the Education Ministry.

At issue are certain omissions in some of the eight history textbooks on topics such as the 1950-53 Korean War, the ministry explained. Some of the history textbooks did not mention the killings of civilians by North Korean soldiers while stating similar killings by South Korean and U.S. troops, said Kim Yeon-seok, a ministry official handling the matter.

The government plans to decide by September whether to set up the publication review body.

The government was in charge of publishing history textbooks from 1973 to 2009. In 2010, it began allowing approved private publishing companies to print history textbooks.

The rival parties, meanwhile, showed mixed reactions to the plan.

“While in theory there are eight history textbooks available, in reality, from each student’s point of view, they are only learning from one textbook,” said Rep. Kang Eun-hee of the Saenuri Party.

“When one specific textbook is chosen, it is still difficult to learn various views regardless of the textbook being biased or not,” she said, adding that in such a case, gathering diverse experts into creating one textbook with balanced contents may be more efficient.

To concerns that state meddling could become more convenient, Kwon rebuked by saying that attention paid to one textbook instead of eight would disable full interference by a specific political party or ideology.

Main opposition New Politics Alliance for Democracy Rep. Youn Kwan-suk, on the other hand, criticized the move as a highly political tactic using the “remnant of the ’70s and the Yushin era,” referring to the dictatorial government.

“The remarks (by Hwang and Kim) are aimed to instigate a battle of ideologies, not to deliver the history as it is,” Yoon said.

Claiming that state-authorized textbooks at high schools rarely exist in developed countries, Youn said that while any biased contents should be fixed, it is wrong to overhaul the entire textbook system just for that reason.



From news reports