By Kim Tong-hyung
Sections of a controversial school history book, written by right-wing scholars, have apparently been plagiarized liberally from Wikipedia, a historian claimed Friday.
The textbook, published by Kyohak Publishing and approved last month by the National Institute of Korean History (NIKH), has enraged some critics, who say that it's designed to support arguments that defend the military governments of the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s and downplay the nation's bloody struggle toward democratization.
Chang Shin, a researcher at the Institute of Korean Historical Studies, insists that the main problem with the Kyohak book is not so much its viewpoint as its sloppily assembled content. He points to several of the book's paragraphs on Kim Sung-soo (1891∼1955), founder of the conservative Dong-A Ilbo newspaper and regarded by many historians as a collaborator of the Japanese colonial government, which appear to have been taken liberally from Wikipedia.
The book summarizes part of Kim's life as follows: ''After Imperial Japan forcibly closed the Dong-A Ilbo in August of 1940, Kim, the owner (of the newspaper), went back to his hometown and lived in retreat until liberation. Imperial Japan demanded him to change his name to a Japanese name, but he refused. He also refused to accept a peerage title from Imperial Japan.''
The description on the Korean-language page of Wikipedia is essentially the same. It differs only in that it provides the specific dates of when the newspaper was shut down (Aug. 10), the year when Kim was pressured to adopt a Japanese name (1941) and when Korea was liberated from Japanese rule (Aug. 15, 1945).
A more conspicuous plagiarized section was a caption on the photo of an article published under Kim's name in the Aug. 15, 1943, edition of the Maeil Sinbo, which functioned as the mouthpiece of the Japanese colonial government.
The caption explains that the article, titled ''Discard your weaknesses and worship the military,'' encouraged young Koreans to enlist in the Imperial army, was an editorial suspected of being written by a different author (presumably the newspaper's reporter Kim Byeong-gyu) borrowing Kim's name.
Wikipedia's description of the photo is identical. This is glaringly obvious because of the factually incorrect details, Chang said.
''The theory that Kim Sung-so's article was written by someone else is based on a memoir of Yoo Jin-oh. However, in his book, Yoo questioned an article titled 'Dying for the greater cause and responsibility of the Imperial subject,' not the editorial described in Wikipedia,'' said Chang, who has written several studies on the life of Kim.
''It should also be noted that both articles were contributions and not editorials. It seems that the authors of the Kyohak textbook wrote this part without basic fact checking.''
Kyohak declined to comment on Chang's criticism and refused to identify who authored the descriptions of Kim in the book. Jeon Byung-hyeon, a lawmaker of the opposition Democratic Party, called for NIKH head Lee Tae-jin to resign over the textbook controversy.
School books began leaning further toward the right during the previous Lee government, which empowered academics who were part of the conservative "New Right'' movement, a loose association of people from different backgrounds close to the Lee administration. Under the administration of Park Geun-hye, daughter of the late dictator Park Chung-hee, "leaning right" could become the ideological stance in all school books.
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| Kim Sung-soo |
The textbook, published by Kyohak Publishing and approved last month by the National Institute of Korean History (NIKH), has enraged some critics, who say that it's designed to support arguments that defend the military governments of the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s and downplay the nation's bloody struggle toward democratization.
Chang Shin, a researcher at the Institute of Korean Historical Studies, insists that the main problem with the Kyohak book is not so much its viewpoint as its sloppily assembled content. He points to several of the book's paragraphs on Kim Sung-soo (1891∼1955), founder of the conservative Dong-A Ilbo newspaper and regarded by many historians as a collaborator of the Japanese colonial government, which appear to have been taken liberally from Wikipedia.
The book summarizes part of Kim's life as follows: ''After Imperial Japan forcibly closed the Dong-A Ilbo in August of 1940, Kim, the owner (of the newspaper), went back to his hometown and lived in retreat until liberation. Imperial Japan demanded him to change his name to a Japanese name, but he refused. He also refused to accept a peerage title from Imperial Japan.''
The description on the Korean-language page of Wikipedia is essentially the same. It differs only in that it provides the specific dates of when the newspaper was shut down (Aug. 10), the year when Kim was pressured to adopt a Japanese name (1941) and when Korea was liberated from Japanese rule (Aug. 15, 1945).
A more conspicuous plagiarized section was a caption on the photo of an article published under Kim's name in the Aug. 15, 1943, edition of the Maeil Sinbo, which functioned as the mouthpiece of the Japanese colonial government.
The caption explains that the article, titled ''Discard your weaknesses and worship the military,'' encouraged young Koreans to enlist in the Imperial army, was an editorial suspected of being written by a different author (presumably the newspaper's reporter Kim Byeong-gyu) borrowing Kim's name.
Wikipedia's description of the photo is identical. This is glaringly obvious because of the factually incorrect details, Chang said.
''The theory that Kim Sung-so's article was written by someone else is based on a memoir of Yoo Jin-oh. However, in his book, Yoo questioned an article titled 'Dying for the greater cause and responsibility of the Imperial subject,' not the editorial described in Wikipedia,'' said Chang, who has written several studies on the life of Kim.
''It should also be noted that both articles were contributions and not editorials. It seems that the authors of the Kyohak textbook wrote this part without basic fact checking.''
Kyohak declined to comment on Chang's criticism and refused to identify who authored the descriptions of Kim in the book. Jeon Byung-hyeon, a lawmaker of the opposition Democratic Party, called for NIKH head Lee Tae-jin to resign over the textbook controversy.
School books began leaning further toward the right during the previous Lee government, which empowered academics who were part of the conservative "New Right'' movement, a loose association of people from different backgrounds close to the Lee administration. Under the administration of Park Geun-hye, daughter of the late dictator Park Chung-hee, "leaning right" could become the ideological stance in all school books.
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