▲ Kim Na Young (nykim1226@korea.ac.kr) Senior Reporter, The Granite Tower (GT)

The media recently went wild as the new issue of Kyohaksa, a Korean publication company, and its Korean history textbook became a hot potato. Everyone started to heavily criticize and even attack the vicious pro-Japanese statements made in the book. As a result, the textbook was not used nor chosen, for any school that did so became the next target of the public. However, is Kyohaksa the only problem of Korean history textbooks? 

In the past, the Korean government had designed a national textbook for every school to use. However, in order to make the students more open to various perspectives regarding history, the government has decided to allow book publication companies to create their own textbooks. At last, they have been made and are to be used starting from this year of 2014.

Out of the eight different kinds of textbooks, the reason why those by Kyohaksa are especially criticized is that they contain unpatriotic content which excessively exaggerates the past of Korea. For example, it mentions both An Jung-geun, a Korean independence activist, and Kim Gu, a leader of Korean independence movement, as “terrorists." Thus, many people attack it for being too biased in favor of the Japanese.

Nonetheless, the reality is that Kyohaksa is not the only publication company that prints textbooks filled with prejudice. In fact, what people should really consider carefully is whether all of the new textbooks are appropriate enough to be taught within school, rather than only witch-hunting one single type of textbook.

All seven others portray an overly nationalistic perspective that prevents them from becoming good learning materials. They only refer to information that is beneficial to Korea. On the contrary, the texts do not mention any historical events that may be disadvantageous to the country, including the Vietnamese War and the Tây Vinh Massacre. Therefore, the books aim to, in a sense, brainwash the students with the excessively patriotic views. Kumsung Publication also has a problem with its textbooks, although it has not become as big of an issue as Kyohaksa. The books are too pro-North Korea, as it almost praises such a society. For instance, it refers to the South Korean society before 1987 as an indiscriminate severe dictatorship, while it expresses a rather amicable stance towards the current North Korean society.

In order to solve such problems, the country should follow Germany. A unique aspect of German high schools is that they fill their books with a collection of primary sources including pictures, letters and newspaper articles that existed in the past. This helps the textbooks to be written in a much more neutral tone, as it minimizes the number of interpretations of the country’s historians.

History is a subjective field of study that can involve various interpretations. Since no one truly knows every side of what had happened in the past, people simply have to match puzzle pieces together in order to create a broader perspective of the picture as a whole. Thus, showing the students the primary sources will enable the students to develop their own opinions and insights about history.

It is undoubtedly true that the contents of Kyohaksa are inappropriate to be in a high school textbook. However, the true issue that needs to be further spotlighted is not only on Kyohaksa but on every single one of the eight new textbooks. Thus, realizing the problems of the new historical materials, the government and the publication companies should take bigger and more courageous steps to meticulously revise the contents of all textbooks.

저작권자 © The Granite Tower 무단전재 및 재배포 금지