Participatory programs needed for education on security
University students form association to study, take lessons from Korean War
Following is the sixth and last in a series of articles to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the outbreak of the Korean War which fell on June 25.―ED.
By Park Si-soo
Staff reporter
A number of surveys showing that nearly half of the younger generation has little basic knowledge about the Korea War underscore the importance of children's education on probably the most tragic chapter of Korean history.
This year's 60th anniversary of the outbreak of the war means the approach of the gradual passage of the older generation who witnessed and experienced it. It was a war from which the next generation should learn lessons.
"We are fully aware of the necessity of a new educational approach to the war," said Lt. Col. Yoo Mi-ae, a spokeswoman for the 60th Anniversary of the Korean War Commemoration Office of the Ministry of National Defense. "We are trying to come up with new and effective ways to educate the general public properly."
At least now, however, it seems that this is easier said than done.
No notable modifications, in both content and education methods, have actually been applied to current war education programs, run by the government and civic groups that depend largely on text-based materials, which have not been updated for years, and black-and-white historic films. The defense ministry is no exception.
"Any changes to the programs require time-consuming, extensive studies and research," Yoo said in a phone interview. "Frankly, we have no concrete solution at this moment."
For the ministry and institutes facing the dilemma, a students' association here that organized a variety of commemorative events for the 60th anniversary, which fell on June 25, provides plausible, note-worthy tips.
"Seeing is believing. And to meet is to believe more strongly," stressed Byun Jong-kuk, head of a students' association to commemorate the anniversary, highlighting the effectiveness of "participatory" war education.
"Do you remember how you were taught and what you leant about the Korea War at primary and secondary schools? Maybe, not much!" said Byun, 25, a senior student majoring in politics and diplomacy at Yonsei University in Seoul. "That's the fallout from current education programs, which were designed with little calculation on the reality of their educational effectiveness."
Text-based education
Such old-fashioned war education has left critical loopholes in knowledge as well as attitudes toward national security among the younger generation, experts say.
A recent survey of 1,016 teenagers by the defense ministry showed 43.2 percent of them didn't know when the war broke out. Only half of them knew the fact that North Korea invaded the South.
Surprisingly, 13.4 percent said the United States, Seoul's strongest ally, was culpable for the bloody full-scale war, while another 13.4 percent pointed out to Japan as the major culprit behind the invasion.
In a survey 30 percent of respondents said that the U.S. was the biggest threat to security on the Korean Peninsula, followed by Japan with 27.7 percent and North Korea with merely 24.5 percent.
As a bold countermeasure following the sinking of South Korean warship in a torpedo attack by North Korea on March 26, the government is moving to re-designate the North as the "main enemy" in its defense white paper, a concept dropped six years ago amid a push for inter-Korean reconciliation.
Bolstering the concern is that such critical flaws in security concepts have already tarnished a great number of those playing leading roles in national security.
In 2004, a poll of first-year cadets at the Korea Military Academy showed 34 percent of newcomers to the academy or 250 called the United States the main enemy of Seoul.
Kim Choong-bae, who conducted the survey as then superintendent of the military school, argued that "inappropriate" education in schools is to blame for the hostile sentiment toward the country's closest ally.
Participation needed
To normalize the false security concept in education, the reform-minded student urged the authorities to shift its war education concept to "participatory" from sedentary.
Countless scientific studies have proven that participatory education programs help increase knowledge about the domain in which the experience occurs and at the same time intensify feelings of self- and social-efficacy.
Among participatory programs Byun and 20 other students co-organized to commemorate the anniversary include visits to the demilitarized zone (DMZ) and foreign embassies representing countries that sent troops here during the war to combat the invaders from north; open discussions; and lectures about the war from both domestic and foreign war veterans.
One of the lecturers they invited was Paik Sun-yup, the country's first four-star Army general who fought major battles during the Korean War.
More than 300 secondary and university students benefitted from the program, Byun said.
"Meeting and talking with war veterans itself provided great opportunities to deepen participants' understanding and knowledge about the war, which typical text-based programs cannot offer," he said. "When we leant from lessons that more than 3,000 U.S. soldiers were killed in an operation to buy time for our soldiers' retreat, we raised questions over the reason for anti-U.S. campaigns here in South Korea."
Citing an incident during Paik's lecture, Byun noted that one student said a lot of bodies of North Korean soldiers were found with their legs shackled to non-portable weapons at major battle grounds, meaning they were forced to fight and destined to die in a battle.
"How brutal was the North Korean regime, to do that?" he said.
The student organizer said some participants joined the program with the wrong idea that small-scale skirmished initiated by the South provoked the North and in response North Korea launched a full-scale war, in other words, South Korea was to blame.
"They completely dropped the idea after the program," he said. "This was an example that obviously showed how impractical current text-based programs are in educating students about the issue."
Based on interviews with teenage North Korean defectors, he called for the introduction of war education capitalizing on Korean War veterans.
In North Korea, war veterans lecture at schools, meet and talk face-to-face with those unfamiliar with the historic event, he said. "But this is not the case here."
The government has hosted a variety of memorial events with war veterans at home and abroad participating. But few of them involved going to classrooms to educate students.
"It's something that needs to be changed," Byun said. "They are valuable living resources for war education that cannot be replaced."