[From Readers] Let`s publicize Japan`s history distortion on Internet

All Koreans are angry over Japan`s distortion of history in a newly written middle school textbook. It seems that we have no particular tool to counter it. I`d like to make a suggestion.

I suggest that the Korean and Chinese governments, the Human Rights Commission of the United Nations and civic organizations in Korea and China jointly open an Internet homepage. Through this Website, we would be able to explain how Japan distorted history in Korean, Chinese, Japanese and English. Related articles on the major issues such as the comfort women and Nanjing massacre, for instance, would be carried on the site. The stories would include newspaper articles from that time, foreign reports, Japan`s testimony, Japanese newspaper reports and testimony from foreign witnesses. Related photos also would be shown on the homepage. In order to boost the credibility of the contents to be carried on the site, I suggest that the materials be examined by the related countries listed. Japan should be allowed to express its opinion on the articles on the site, and the operators of the homepage could present evidence to refute Japan`s opinion.

The proposed homepage could be linked to the Websites of Japan`s Ministry of Education and Science and of Japanese scholars who oppose the history distortion so that Japanese students could gain easy access to the truth. I think that if the Japanese students obtain a correct understanding of history through the envisioned homepage and discover the errors in the descriptions in their textbooks, the books carrying distorted accounts would be removed from schools.

Hong Chong-Hwa (drhong77@kornet.net)