From the Joongang Ilbo: “In a recent poll of elementary students, almost 40 percent mistook the Korean War for Japan’s invasion of Korea… “As unification education started to be stressed in the curriculum from 1988 to 1992, chapters on the Korean War disappeared and parts describing the suffering after the attacks of the Red Army were omitted.”
In a previous post on Pyongyang Soju being imported to the U.S., I used pics from a bottle I have, which was purchased in South Korea. Jason Perlow of Off the Broiler sampled some Pyongyang Soju at a Korean restaurant in New Jersey and has photos of the updated labels (looks like it was $5.99 a bottle).
- #OFK has a telling post (w/video) on Joe Biden's North Korea policy. It's hard to do much of a related post on Obama since he hasn't even completed one term in the senate and so has a thin record. See all Election 2008 posts.
- #15 August is the 63rd anniversary of Victory over Japan (V-J) Day, or Liberation Day in North and South Korea. It’s hard to imagine how the North Koreans could explain the significance of the day without mentioning the U.S. doing the heavy lifting, but they still manage to do so.
- #North Korean Economy Watch has released version 11 of his layer/bookmarks for North Korea in Google Earth - easily the most authoritative map of North Korea on the web.
- #
June 18th, 2007 at 11:12 pm
those who forget history…
June 19th, 2007 at 7:52 am
This does help to explain some of the shift in anti-Americanism as well; stressing reunification at the expense of education on the Korean War during formative years. The teachers unions were at revisionism years before Kim Dae-jung fooled the nation.
June 19th, 2007 at 1:03 pm
Will Koreans remember this the next time the issue of Japan’s distorted textbooks arises?
June 19th, 2007 at 1:22 pm
Remember what? Kidding.
When it comes to the history of the colonial period, both sides are seriously lacking objectivity. Not that I think it should be entirely objective.
In the U.S. I’ve talked with Japanese students who knew practically nothing of the negative side of their colonial/WWII history, and Korean graduate students who were equally unaware of many of the positive aspects of U.S. involvement in Korea (e.g., Kim Dae-jung’s neck saved a couple of times, etc.).
Of course most Americans won’t even know what “colonial” period in Korea we’d be speaking of.
June 20th, 2007 at 9:38 am
Indeed, ignorance of history isn’t limited to a few countries. However, Korea is the only country I know of that sticks its nose into other nations’ curricula. Stories about textbook passages on Korea appear periodically in the Korean media, and it wasn’t too long ago that Korean government officials were in Boston to criticize the selection of Beyond the Bamboo Groves in local secondary school reading lists.
June 20th, 2007 at 10:29 am
Now that you mention it, I don’t remember hearing much about Japan objecting to South Korea’s textbooks, and they can’t be flattering for Japan (not that they should be).
I wonder if there are cases of American NGOs or the like, rather than the government, attempting to influence how American history is taught overseas? Unless they claim we use babies to pave roads, I can’t imagine our government getting involved, and maybe not even then.
June 20th, 2007 at 2:28 pm
If I remember correctly, sometime between now and 9/11, our government talked about setting up a department specifically for trying to combat promotion of anti-US material/propaganda. It was not going to be aimed at education alone but in general.
I got the impression it was going to be more like the Jewish centers (like that well-known figure whose name escapes me complained about the Korean picture book this past year) -
more like those groups than — Korean groups who sue Jay Leno for dog eating jokes……but who knows how it would end up if they did start such a program….???
June 20th, 2007 at 6:20 pm
The well-known figure you are referring to, US, is Simon Wiesenthal.
I own a small collection of Korean and Chinese textbooks. Chinese history books are, as you might guess, far worse than Korean ones in terms of glaring omissions and blatant distortions. Chinese high school world history books go on and on about Western colonialism but tread very lightly in talking about the Soviet bloc and resistance movements like the 1956 Hungarian uprising and Prague Spring, explaining that the proletariat weren’t primed for socialism. The section on the Korean War dates the start of the conflict to June 25, 1950 but does not tell which side invaded which. The Great Leap Forward is acknowledged as a mistake but the word “famine” is not used and no death tolls reported. No mention of China’s 1979 invasion of Vietnam either. I really could go on with many more examples. Modern Chinese textbooks are still a vast improvement over Cultural Revolution PC brainwashing. I own this old abacus textbook in which nearly single word and computation problem is pregnant with either pro-CCP or anti-capitalist/anti-US verbage.
Overt brainwashing and censorship do work. The recent furor over the Tiananmen Square memorial newspaper ad is a perfect case in point. http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070607/od_nm/china_tiananmen_advertisement_dc
American textbooks aren’t free of errors or bias, but our multicultural population and free media keep us pretty honest.
June 20th, 2007 at 6:21 pm
The well-known figure you are referring to, US, is Simon Wiesenthal.
June 20th, 2007 at 6:43 pm
Sonagi says:
“Indeed, ignorance of history isn’t limited to a few countries. However, Korea is the only country I know of that sticks its nose into other nations’ curricula.”
Sonagi, isn’t China rather boisterous in their objections to the Japanese historiographical treatment of the events surrounding World War II as well? This isn’t a rhetorical question, as I am not too well-informed on this topic. But I vaguely recall several instances of Chinese protests, and I thought you may know better–given that you’ve spent some time in China.
June 21st, 2007 at 8:49 am
You are correct that China has also protested the Japanese textbooks. Thank you for triggering my memory.
June 21st, 2007 at 8:52 am
YOu need not have appealed to my “expertise,” BTW. You could have easily googled the answer to your “non-rhetorical” question.
June 21st, 2007 at 10:30 am
Sonagi,
It’s more efficient (both in terms of getting better answers, and saving oneself from needless work) to appeal to the expertise of someone “in the know,” than via a random search that will flood you with much that is useless
As for my clarifying my query as “non-rhetorical,” I am trying much harder not to offend people needlessly in my old(er) age! I think it’s re-reading about Lincoln’s “prudence” and Ben Franklin’s Autobiography that has been the catalyst for this change.