South Korea’s Blue House And Ruling Saenuri Party Pushes Plan For Government-Controlled History Textbooks
South Korea's executive office, The Blue House and ruling Saenuri Party will push with their plan of a government-controlled history textbooks from private publishers, reported Korea JoongAng Daily Oct. 8.
"President Park Geun-hye has openly showed concerns about the overall problems in Korean history education," said a Blue House official.
The move was directed towards preventing misrepresentation of historical data and biased ideologies in classrooms. New history textbooks with impartial views were also order by Park to be developed by the Ministry of Education.
The Saenuri Party is in full support of the president's decision to take control over all history textbooks being used by students from private publishers.
"Current history textbooks are pushing the students deeper into a sense of defeat and making them citizens who blame everything on the society and the country," said Saenuri Chairman Kim Moo Sung at the World Korean Community Leaders Convention. "The most important mission for us is guiding the future generation to challenge the world with positive minds and creative thinking and develop Korea into the world's 10th largest economy. To realize this goal, history textbooks must be published by the government."
FT reported that one of the members of the opposition New Politics Alliance for Democracy, Yoon Gwan Seok, deem the proposed policy as a "political move" that would isolate South Korea from the standard practice of developed nations.
The opposing views of South Koreans on their history has long been an issue. One example is the Japanese regime and military dictatorship in the country, which liberal critics protested as being misinterpreted in some history textbooks, noted the Index on January 21, 2014.
"History textbooks for middle and high schools, regardless of their publishers, are written consistently with an anti-Korean view that denies our history," said Saenuri Chairman Kim. "It appears to be an attempt to teach people's revolution to the students based on a leftist world view."
The Ministry of Education has yet to give a final decision on the matter saying, "The ruling party is making a strong push, but no decision was made at a consultation between the party and the government."
