Dispute centers on state-authored textbook at audit

By Kim Bo-eun

The latest allegations surrounding the state-authored textbook plan under the former Park Geun-hye administration became a central point of controversy at the National Assembly’s audit by the education-related committee on Thursday.

A day earlier, a committee investigating the textbook plan requested Deputy Prime Minister and Education Minister Kim Sang-kon to refer the case to investigative authorities to look into allegations the former administration intervened to promote a positive public opinion of the disputed plan.

In the audit, ruling party members called the plan one of the Park administration’s most corrupt policies, while the opposition party took issue with the "biased" composition of the investigation committee.

“On the last day of administrative notice of the state-authored textbook plan in 2015, an education ministry director notified officials that boxes containing statements of opinions in favor would arrive at night, and that they should count the numbers and add them to the tallied number of positive opinions,” Rep. Kim Han-jung of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea said.

“The education ministry could not have orchestrated the public opinion manipulation without an order from Cheong Wa Dae or the National Intelligence Agency,” he said.

The opposition accused the committee established by the education ministry under the Deputy Prime Minister of being biased.

“Those who took part in disposing the plan, those who had actively opposed the plan, and a lawyer who had defended against a high school that had volunteered to use the textbook are members of the committee,” Rep. Jun Hee-kyung of the opposition Liberty Korea Party (LKP) said.

“How can one give the name investigative committee to such a one-sided, biased group? It should be called an opposition group,” she said.

Jun added that the committee also needs to look into the opposition’s opinion documents.

Another lawmaker went as far as demanding the committee be scrapped.

“The responsibility of the plan lies in the ex-president _ why does the committee try to hold the officials who simply followed orders accountable? The committee must be abolished,” LKP lawmaker Han Sun-kyo said.

In response, Deputy Prime Minister Kim said, “The investigative committee has been drawn up to look into how the state-authored textbook plan came into being. It is not to reprimand individuals.”

Before the introduction of the state-authored textbook plan, the Park administration conducted a public opinion survey.

The opposition party at the time and media raised suspicions that large numbers of the same form of the document were printed at a print shop on Yeouido, Seoul.

The investigation committee said Thursday that 53 out of 103 boxes of opinions for and against the plan contained documents of the same form.

Inspections into 26 boxes showed hundreds of opinion documents were submitted under a single name.

Documents submitted by 1,613 people had the same address on them. Some of the forms had names such as Lee Wan-yong, the pro-Japanese collaborator, and Park Geun-hye.

Only 4,374 of the 152,805 documents in favor of the plan met the requirements. The committee randomly contacted the authors of 677 of them to which 252 responded.

Half of them (51 percent) conceded to submitting the document, while 25 percent said they did not. Others said they did not remember.