By Kang Shin-who
Staff Reporter
The education authorities are moving to remove or rewrite left-leaning content in textbooks by the end of October.
The move came as conservative civic groups and the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry are claiming that 56 expressions in 31 issues of secondary school textbooks are left-leaning. The Ministry of Education, Science and Technology has already made the revision requests to its textbook committee and will ask ``problematic’’ publishers to rewrite textbooks according to the committee’s decision.
Among controversial contents are ``Korea’s liberation by the victory of the allied nations after World War II hampered establishment of our people’s new government,’’ which could be considered anti-American, and that ``the `Saemaul Movement’ was used to justify the dictatorship of President Park Chung-hee.’’ Also, contents such as ``Too much liberty in economic market drives a bigger gap between the haves and have-nots’’ was requested to be revised.
``Distorted historical facts and misleading views in textbooks should be corrected. We expect publishers of the problematic textbooks to correct the books spontaneously,’’ a ministry official said. ``If publishers do not listen to our requests, we will enforce our legal authority.’’