Embellishing Kim Administration in Textbooks

From next year, evaluation of the Kim Yong-sam and Kim Dea-jung administration will be put into some of the high school history textbooks, causing debates over its objectivity.

Many people point out that it is tough to keep objectivity in evaluating what an administration still in power has allegedly achieved. The controversial evaluation is in the books dealing with the politically sensitive part concerning the recent history.

In addition, the Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development (MEHRD) declined to reveal the information on the 10 textbook reviewers in order to prevent possible corruption and bribery. But the MEHRD’s refusal makes us wonder about the credentials of the reviewers.

Experts criticized, “The recent history is controversial. Describing it presupposes clear classification of historic ages and discovery of strict, objective data. It also requires experts’ reviewing and demonstration of objectivity.”

Chung Tae-Hun a history professor at Korea University rebuked, “It is very hard and inappropriate to describe the part of the history still going on. The part is related to the people currently having power.”

The well educated who themselves have studied or have their children educated in Europe remarked, “In Europe, administrations are frequently changed via election. Europeans consider it a taboo to promote the incumbent administration or depreciate the past ones in the textbooks.”

In the meanwhile, the MEHRD announced on 30th that it would carefully analyze and revise the parts of the books which are at the center of the controversy.

The MEHRD held a press conference in the afternoon and explained, “In writing the textbooks dealing the recent history, the standards used were those proposed by the publishing companies. That way, we tried to keep objectivity and stay away from bias. The standards of reviewing were also for screening out errors of the content, and biased theories, viewpoints and expressions.”

The MEHRD also promised, “The reviewing committee’s judgment was independent and fair. But once the objectivity was put into question, we will review the texts at issue carefully. And if necessary, our Ministry will revise it in addition to the revision conducted by the companies.”

One official at the MEHRD remarked, “We will make revisions such that the parts regarding the current administration will contain just objective facts. Moreover, we will not definitively describe the parts about which the whole society is yet to build up a consensus. We will listen to the opinions from all quarters and heed the questions raised by the press.”

The history textbooks were originally published by the government. Later during the 7th Educational Process, the part dealing with the modern and recent history began to be published in a separate textbook. Furthermore, from that time, the textbooks about the modern history have been published by the companies upon the reviewing of the Ministry.

Yoon-Jong Yoo inchul@donga.com gustav@donga.com