History war: South Korean government pushes ahead with new school textbooks to 'correct bias'
The move caps weeks of debate about whether it was democratic for the government to dictate how the country’s turbulent modern history is taught
South Korea on Tuesday 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 critics accusing President Park Geun-hye's administration of seeking to deliberately 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 middle and high school students would each receive a single government-issued history textbook from 2017.
“We can no longer allow the use of distorted and biased history textbooks to teach our precious children,” he told a news conference. “We have to fix the way history textbooks are published so we can make a correct textbook.”
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.