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| An online poster by the Voluntary Agency Network of Korea (VANK) / Courtesy of VANK |
By Lee Hyo-jin
A professor of Harvard Business School, who co-authored a textbook on Korean politics and history, said he plans to make editorial changes to rectify historical distortions in the book, which a local civic group pointed out.
The Voluntary Agency Network of Korea (VANK), a civic organization promoting Korean culture and history online, said Saturday that Forest Reinhardt, a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School and co-author of the textbook "Korea," replied to the organization's request to modify multiple errors found in the book.
"I want you to know that we are interested in getting feedback on the cases that we write for our students' use and that we take your views very seriously," read the letter from Reinhardt to VANK.
Saying that he has already talked with officials from the Korean diplomatic corps about the topics pointed out by VANK, the professor said, "We expect to make editorial changes to future versions of this case."
Earlier in September, the civic organization claimed that the textbook, which is widely used in Harvard Business School, "omits much of the 5000-years-old Korean history by stating that early Korean history emerged from the unification of the Silla Kingdom (668)."
VANK also protested that the Goryeo kingdom is introduced as a "tributary state of China" and the textbook states that Korea had experienced developments during Japanese colonial rule (1910-1945), a biased view widely supported among Japanese right-wing activists.
In the past several weeks, the organization has sent multiple e-mails to authors and publishers of the book, as well as officials at Harvard Business School, complaining about the factual errors.
It has also launched an online petition titled "Is Harvard School of the 21st century equal to the Japanese Imperial University 100 years ago?" urging the school to use accurate information concerning Korean history in its classes.
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