New Korean history books demote Rhee from ‘dictator’ to ‘long-term’ ruler

The new history textbooks that will be used in Korean high schools starting next year. (Yonhap)

At a time of heightened interest in how textbooks present Korean history, amid heated debates about history itself, the results of an official evaluation of new history textbooks have been made public. Among the texts approved for use in schools are high school history textbooks by the Korea Institute of Learning Evaluation (KILE), which have passed the evaluation for the first time.

Critics of the textbooks argue that there is a notable lack of description and explanation of the sexual slavery of the Japanese Imperial Army’s ‘comfort women’ system. They also point to the text’s description of Syngman Rhee’s rule not as a ‘dictatorship’ but as a ‘long-term possession of power’.

Seven history textbooks for middle school students and nine history textbooks for high school students will be released in March next year, according to the 2022 revisions to public school curricula. All of the new texts have passed official evaluations. On Friday, Hankyoreh compared the contents of the Korea Institute of Learning Evaluation’s “Korean History 2” middle school textbook — which covers the period from the Japanese occupation to the present — with previous editions.

According to the standards of the Ministry of Education for history textbooks for high schools and colleges, sufficient descriptions of the comfort women system are mandatory. The Ministry of Education calls these standards “elements at the standard level of academic achievement.”

In its description of the “comfort women,” the KILE text states, “Young women were taken to places like China and Southeast Asia and forced to live horrible lives.” The text offers practice questions under the subtitle, “Let’s Discuss Why We Must Never Forget the Comfort Women Practices of the Imperial Japanese Army.” The previous text from Donga Publishing delves deeper into the concept of “comfort women,” lists the main parties responsible, and describes the Japanese government’s denial of history and the various changes in its official position on the issue of comfort women. The content of the KILE text on such matters is relatively minimal.

The text published by Liber School includes additional student exercises on the forced mobilization of the comfort women and lists all the public statements by Japanese prime ministers that distort the history of the comfort women. It also includes an exercise in which students are asked to write their own public statements on the issue.

A high school history teacher who asked not to be named noted, “Because they are for children, other books also do not contain direct and descriptive language about the sexual exploitation that took place. The new text, however, contains no additional exercises or documentation about such practices, and its content on the subject is comparatively poor.”

A photo of Syngman Rhee fronts a section on seven figures who influenced the course of modern Korean history after the country’s liberation from Japan. The text reads: “After liberation, he formed the Central Council for the Rapid Realization of Korean Independence and called for the formation of a provisional government in South Korea, opposing the formation of a trusteeship or consortium government.” In a subsection titled “Exploring Further,” the text encourages students to write about the historical background of Rhee’s 1946 declaration in Jeongeup, South Jeolla Province, where he advocated the establishment of a single government in South Korea.

“If Syngman Rhee had not called for an independent South Korean government, what do you think would have happened?” the text asks. This question is part of a section that asks the student, “Let us examine why Syngman Rhee called for an independent South Korean government instead of a unified (Korean) government.”

Furthermore, the KILE text uses the phrase “long-term possession of power” to describe Rhee’s rule, which differs significantly from descriptions used in other texts, such as “dictatorship” (Hainaim Education), “the formation of a dictator’s authority” (Mirae N), and “long-term dictatorship” (C Mass).

In a passage about the formation of the government of the Republic of Korea, the text uses the term “liberal democracy” instead of “democracy.” This also differs from previous texts. All of these revisions were made after the 2022 curriculum revisions made under the Yoon Suk-yeol administration. When the Ministry of Education unilaterally pushed for the use of the term “liberal democracy” at the time, the research team working on the text opposed the move, arguing that the term “limited the scope of diversity and inclusiveness inherent in the idea of ​​democracy.”

“Topics that are quite controversial are part of student assignments called ‘Explore Further’ or ‘Explore History.’ I worry that students are getting a skewed view of history depending on how their teachers use the text to push them toward certain viewpoints,” said another high school history teacher who asked not to be named.

By Shin So-yoon, reporter; Lee Woo-yun, reporter

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