By Bae Ji-sook
Beginning next year, primary and secondary schools will increase their teaching on Korea’s sovereignty over the Dokdo islets in the East Sea, the education ministry announced Thursday.
The measure comes as the Japanese government plans to teach that Dokdo is one of its territories to its younger generation. The Ministry of Education, Science and Technology said that it has requested superintendents of 16 metropolitan offices of education to establish a 10-hour or more lesson plan about Dokdo.
Currently, only the educational authority in North Gyeongsang Province, in which Dokdo is situated, obliges all schools to conduct classes to raise awareness of the islets.
First to fourth graders in elementary schools receive such lessons for 10 hours a year, while fifth and sixth graders use specially designed textbooks, and middle and high school students have extra-curricular classes.
South and North Chungcheong and South Jeolla provinces as well as Incheon have decided to regularize such teaching by the end of the year.
Textbooks will also reflect more of modern Korean history including Japan’s occupation of Korea from 1910 to 1945 and regarding Dokdo and Tokyo’s claim of sovereignty over the islets.
Currently, the Dokdo issue was mentioned in school teachers’ guidebooks but not dealt with in students’ books.
A new high school history book is due in March next year stressing Japan’s colonial rule and its effect on the Korean peninsula; Korean’s resistance against it; and Japanese’s claim over the rocky islets that still sparks disputes.
There are more books to come: in 2012, a middle school history book and four high school textbooks including on history and geography are due; in 2014, high school East Asian history, law and society, world geography and others will be published and used in classrooms. These books will clarify that the Japanese authorities’ claims are tarnishing Korea-Japan ties.
Tokyo’s attempt to claim Dokdo through educational programs triggered such measures. Till the 1990s, it remained prudent. Dokdo appeared as “disputed” only.
In 2003, the attitude changed and Japan claimed Dokdo, or what it calls Takeshima, as its territory in a high school textbook. In 2005, it wrote, “The Korean government is illegally controlling Takeshima.”
More books are listing the islets as its territory, drawing fierce opposition from Korea. “It is highly likely that all other government-authorized textbooks published there will mislead students to believe that Dokdo is a Japanese island,” a ministry official said.
However, some people say dramatic measures can only make things worse. A speculator was quoted saying to Kuki News, “Dokdo is a Korean island. This is true because Korean people are actually living there. We don’t need to start a fight over textbooks. It will only enlarge the dispute.”