Textbook writer has no right to write N. Korea-biased history in textbook

Textbook writer has no right to write N. Korea-biased history in textbook. April. 03, 2015 07:12. .

In a lawsuit that writers of six types of South Korean history textbooks filed to cancel the order to revise certain textbook contents by the Ministry of Education in November 2013, the court ruled that the revision order was valid. While the writers claimed that the revision order infringed the autonomous right to write a textbook, the Seoul Administrative Court ruled against the plaintiff on Thursday, citing, “There is a necessity of revision order to remove expressions that may mislead readers and to deliver accurate information to students.” This is a meaningful ruling since it upheld the government’s intervention into distorted or biased statements in South Korean history textbooks.

It is suspicious whether the writers recognize legitimacy of Republic of Korea given lopsided contents towards North Korea. While describing the establishment of the South Korean government, some textbooks put the South Korean government’s establishment ahead of the North’s in chronological order. However, North Korea organized the Council of People´s Commissars two years and a half before the South established its own government. It was North Korea that tried to divide itself as an independent nation. The court sided with the Education Ministry, saying, “Such descriptions may give an impression that North Korea is free from the responsibility of the division of the Korean Peninsula in 1945.”

North Korea’s land distribution was just doling out the right of cultivation to farmers, without giving ownership of the land. Even worse, North Korean farmers became de-facto tenant farmers when the North Korean regime created a collective farm in 1958. Nevertheless, some South Korean textbooks described this as "land reform based on free-of-charge expropriation and free-of-charge distribution," as if it gave great benefits to the North Korean farmers. On the textbooks that contained the late North Korean leader Kim Il Sung’s Juche (Self-reliance) ideology, just as North Korean academia claims, the court said, "The textbooks fail to explain what kind of impact the Juche ideology has brought about to the North Korean public." Some textbooks explained the South Korean naval corvette Cheonan and Yeonpyeong Island incidents but skipped clear statement on who caused the incidents. The textbooks were found to have highlighted only negative aspects of South Korea`s economic growth in the 1970s.

South Korean history textbooks serve an important role by forming historical perspective of the future generations. When textbooks embrace the autocratic North Korean regime under the third-generation hereditary succession while applying strict rules against South Korea, students cannot learn history in an objective way. National history academics has been in the controversy over being left-sided, but it must take the ruling seriously. Though publishers have complied with the revision order before being distributed to students, critiques still say that the North Korea-biased view stands out among South Korean history textbooks. Textbooks designed to infuse a North-Korea lopsided view to students should be never allowed for the sake of our students.