Politicizing History, Park Geun-hye Calls for State Textbook

Writing national history is a tough task – any honest historian would admit that. A collection of past events, history is a heap of unstructured data. Indeed, writing history isn’t an objective exercise, even in the best of conditions. Add political elites to the equation and what’s likely to result is an excessively politicized process.

South Korea’s Ministry of Education, with support from President Park Geun-hye and the ruling Saenuri Party, is set to renationalize the production of middle and high school history textbooks. South Korea moved completely away from this system, found in only three other OECD countries (Iceland, Turkey and Greece), in 2010. (A national system of history textbook production was first established in 1974, during Park Chung-hee’s dictatorial rule.) Since the reform, schools choose from among textbooks approved by the National Institute of Korean History, an organization overseen by the Ministry of Education.

The reason cited for the move back to a state system is to clear history textbooks of historical errors and ideological biases. Those who support the government initiative think current history textbooks speak too favorably of North Korea and too negatively of the South. Saenuri Party chairperson, Kim Moo-sung, is one such person.

Kim is quoted in a Hankyoreh story from October 7 as saying, “North Korea is a third generation hereditary dictatorship, and yet parts of many current high school history textbooks describe their system normally. It feels as if they have just cut and pasted the writings of domestic pro-North groups.”

Kim’s comment, while significant (he is the chair of the ruling party), can be read as representative of the political right’s position on the issue of national historiography. Political elites can be grouped, albeit imperfectly, into left or right camps. Leftists tend to emphasize the problems and inequities caused by Japanese collaboration and warn against the “beautification” of Park Chung-hee’s developmental regime. Rightists, on the other hand, are keen to highlight the Republic’s “rags to riches” developmental story and its democratic transition; they are critical of leftist historiography for its defeatist portrayal of national history and its alleged pro-North biases.

While embedded in a history-long debate over national origins and the legacy of Japanese colonialism, the catalyst for the government’s recent decision can be traced to 2013, when a Ministry of Education review found textbooks originally approved for circulation were full of history “errors.”

The ministry ordered the errors corrected, and guidelines issued for how this was to be done. Rather than oblige the ministry, publishers (and their authors) refused to accept the government’s revision guidelines (wanting instead to follow their own). Eventually, Park ordered the ministry to find a different way to regulate the production of history. Unsurprisingly, the ministry came to the conclusion that renationalizing the process was the most efficient way forward.

Returning to the right/left dichotomy (again, an imperfect description), those on the right tend to think reforming the process by which textbooks are produced resulted in historically inaccurate textbooks making their way into middle and high school classes, while leftists have been busy protesting a 2013 history textbook written by so-called “New Right” historians (and published by Kyohak Publishers) that, they claim, whitewashes Japanese colonial rule and portrays Park Chung-hee's developmental regime in an uncomfortably positive light.

South Korean national history, if it is still unclear, is a wedge issue.

Whether it will remain a wedge issue is an open question. Public opinion polls from late September and early October show the population more or less split on the issue, with some polls finding more supporters than opponents of the plan.

However, more recent numbers suggest that the tide may be turning against Park and Saenuri. Real Meter, for instance, shows a nearly 10 percentage point increase in opposition to the government’s plan between October 2 and October 20, with Gallup Korea showing a similar trend.

While it’s unclear what represents rock-bottom support for the plan to renationalize textbook production, this issue, like most highly politicized issues, is subject to framing by public opinion makers and elites. Since the plan was fully endorsed earlier this month, scholars and academics have been voicing their opposition, often in the form of writing petitions denouncing the plan or publicly refusing to take part in the writing of state-produced textbooks.

It is hard to measure, but the opposition from civil society is likely impacting the degree of popular support for the textbook plan. At what point the government might consider reversing course is unclear, but if the plan proves too politically costly for some elected officials, political support in the National Assembly could start to taper off.

The idea that the state is able to get history “right” is apparently outlandish enough that even the Chosun Ilbo – a flagship newspaper of conservative opinion in South Korea – has run columns critical of the government plan to centralize the production of history. And Chosun is not nearly as critical as the left-leaning Hankyoreh, which has had a veritable field day publishing opposition pieces. One senses more than a hint of bewilderment in the Korean press as to how the government actually plans to re-implement a national system of history textbook writing, publication, and distribution.

In 1973, such a move might have been easier. The state loomed large over society--indeed, in many ways it replaced it. But this is 2015. As opposition from society mounts and political support seemingly begins to waver, one wonders whether the proposed approach is politically tenable.