Do Je-hae edits news stories as part of the AI team.
How will state textbooks describe Park Chung-hee?
In a 1978 file photo, Park Geun-hye looks on as her father, then-President Park Chung-hee, practices calligraphy. / Korea Times file
By Do Je-hae
By Do Je-hae
The government named some authors of the state history textbooks, Wednesday, without specifying who would be authoring modern and contemporary Korean history, arguably the most contentious segments in the new texts.
Many are wondering how the authors will describe the controversial figures that have shaped today’s Korea, such as founding President Syngman Rhee (1875-1965) and President Park Chung-hee (1917-1979), assassinated by his intelligence chief after 18 years of dictatorial rule.
All eyes will be on how the texts portray the late Park, father of incumbent President Park Geun-hye, as some critics say that restoring her late father’s reputation is a key factor in her decision to reinstate a state history textbook policy. The main opposition New Politics Alliance for Democracy (NPAD) and other naysayers have raised suspicions that the President’s unilateral push for history textbooks published by the government has an ulterior personal motive.
After the education ministry unveiled some of the authors, some experts shared their views with The Korea Times on how the new material will describe the legacy of the President’s father.
Vladimir Tikhonov, a professor in the Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages at the University of Oslo, said the new textbooks will lead to a whitewashed history, with lots of praise for “development” and little mention of the dictatorship and its brutalities. He is one of the 154 foreign scholars of Korean studies who expressed their opposition to the government’s restoration of state history textbooks in a statement last week.
“My guess is that President Park Chung-hee would be re-moulded as modernization leader, with most, darker sides of his rule being left aside or just mentioned very briefly,” the Russian-born Korean studies scholar said in an interview with The Korea Times. “Most likely, export-driven industrialization will be proclaimed a world-historical success despite all the drawbacks for the underpaid and over-exploited domestic workers. And the New Village Movement will be glorified as the example of rural improvement, despite the fact that urban-rural gap persisted throughout Park’s rule, and impoverished peasants continued to stream to overcrowded cities.”
Tikhonov added that it is unlikely that authors of recent history will be able to provide an objective description about the pros and cons of the late Park’s rule.
“The present textbooks aimed at a more or less objective description, with pros and cons all being mentioned - so, if the authorities needed an objective description, they probably would not need to change things so drastically,” the professor said. “I am afraid that they need a paean to authoritarian, chaebol-led development - with a view to legitimizing their own neo-authoritarian turn by making authoritarianism in the past look much prettier than it really was.”
Don Kirk, a veteran correspondent on Korea, said that one of the challenges for the authors will be to “try to show Park Chung-hee as a complicated figure in a time of rapid transition and growth.”
“I doubt if the authors of these texts will try to portray him in a completely positive light just because he was the father of the current Korean President. Then they and the government would be the target of enormous criticism,” Kirk said. “It would be very hard for anyone to write about President Park Chung-hee in a way that most readers will agree is fair. His presidency is widely regarded as a dark time politically for the Republic of Korea, but he’s also credited with having played a tremendous role in Korea’s rise as an economic power.
“It will be interesting to see how they analyze the Yushin Constitution or the Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA) crackdown on labor protests, and so many other aspects of Park’s rule. Yet, if they emphasize all those issues but not all that he did to spur the economy, they will be guilty of ignoring his greatest achievements,” he said.
The education ministry said 36 authors headed by six lead authors will be responsible for each part of Korean history; prehistoric times, ancient history, the unified Goryeo Kingdom (918-1392), the Joseon Kingdom (1392-1910), modern Korea and contemporary Korea.
The President and the ruling Saenuri Party said that the state textbooks were necessary to correct the current history textbooks that they say are dominated by left-wing bias.
The return to state texts revives a similar policy during the late Park’s authoritarian rule in the 1970s.