"South Korean politics deeply divided over textbook controversy"
The South China Morning Post on October 19 quoted American journalist Donald Kirk as saying that the controversy over textbooks shows the increasingly fierce political divide between the left and right wings in South Korea.
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| Protest against the South Korean government's upcoming publication of a history book. (Source: EPA) |
China and South Korea have repeatedly complained over the years about Japan’s distortion of feudal history in its textbooks, Kirk said. Now in South Korea, another textbook controversy has taken on a new dimension with fierce political overtones.
South Korean conservatives are outraged that leftists are trying to inculcate in the minds of the country's students a "false" version of the country's modern and contemporary history.
They say some books talk about the merits of North Korea's Juche (self-reliance) policy, while others blame South Korea for its role in igniting the 1950 Korean War.
As a result, the South Korean government plans to introduce its own textbooks by the end of March 2017. Meanwhile, the authors of the books, supported by professors and lecturers, have responded by suing the authorities for deliberately censoring their books and “brainwashing” young people with a distorted view of history.
The conflict between the two factions will deepen when the National Assembly election takes place in April 2016, followed by the presidential election in 2017, when the opposition hopes to return to power after a decade of conservative rule./.
According to Vietnam+
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.jpg "Tổng thống Hàn Quốc chủ trì Lễ đón trọng thể Tổng Bí thư Tô Lâm và Phu nhân")
