By Kim Sue-young
Staff Reporter

A lawmaker of the governing Grand National Party (GNP) urged the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade to strengthen monitoring on foreign textbooks as they contain distortions of South Korean history.

During a parliamentary inspection of the ministry Tuesday, Rep. Rhee Beum-kwan said many inaccuracies are regrettably shown in history textbooks of 25 countries.

According to the lawmaker, a Uruguayan textbook states that Korea uses a Chinese language as its mother tongue and a Singaporean one says the nation was a colony of Russia and then Japan.

An Italian history book describes Korea as still under military dictatorship and a Jordanian schoolbook published in 2003 says Buddhism is a state religion in Korea, he added.

Rhee showed a Paraguayan textbook which says Korea used to be a colony of Portugal, which made members of the National Assembly's Committee on Foreign Affairs, Trade and Unification and Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan chuckle.

``Korea is now the 13th largest economic powerhouse but most of the 25 countries focus on the Korean War (1950-53) only,'' he said. ``Besides, it was found that South Korea is confused with North Korea in many of the textbooks.''

The legislator urged Minister Yu to fix the wrong content and make an effort to monitor the history textbooks of foreign countries, stressing the need to give proper information to foreigners.

``According to education ministry reports, people become biased toward foreign countries based on what they learn and experience between six and 14 years old,'' he said. ``That's why we have to pay attention to schoolbooks of other nations.''

E-Passport Vulnerable to Hacking

During the Assembly inspection, a lawmaker of the Pro-Park Geun-hye Alliance claimed that the newly introduced electronic passport is more vulnerable to information hacking. Park was formerly chairwoman of the GNP.

Rep. Song Young-sun insisted that a data reader easily purchased in Yongsan, Seoul, can read personal information in the electronic passport, showing the device that she bought for 200,000 won.

``The ministry said only a few data readers permitted by the government are able to read data in the passport but it proved that personal information can be easily leaked,'' she said.

She also expressed worries over the ministry's plan to embed fingerprint information in a passport, claiming that the data could be read anywhere by anyone.

``To protect personal information, the plan has to be withdrawn and the ministry must allow the people to choose either a chip-embedded passport or a former photo-printed one like that of Japan,'' Song said.

The government began to issue e-passports to public officials and diplomats on a trial basis in March and to ordinary citizens on Aug. 25 for visa-free U.S. trips within 90 days under the Visa Waiver Program (VWP) and prevent forgery of passports.

ksy@koreatimes.co.kr