The Park Geun-hye administration’s proposal to publish state-authored history textbooks unleashed a storm of protest. 

One by one, professors at major universities have issued statements saying that they will not participate in writing the proposed textbooks.

The pool of qualified writers has become very small, raising the interesting question of whether the administration can continue to push through the plan with so few writers.

History comes in many forms, but the variety taught in schools is “school history.” It aims to instill a sense of patriotism in school children so that they will become loyal citizens of the nation. This goal is common across democracies and dictatorships.

The difference between the two is the methodology. Democracies define loyal citizenship as involvement, whereas dictatorships define it as obedience. From this, the definition of patriotism differs. Democracies define patriotism as respect for democratic ideals, whereas dictatorships define it as loyalty to the leader.

South Korea is interesting because in the last hundred years, it has experienced colonial rule, dictatorship, and democracy. The history taught during colonial rule and during the dictatorships that followed defined citizenship as obedience and patriotism as loyalty to the leaders. This type of history naturally rejected differences of interpretation and defined history education as memorization of approved truths which lead to a “correct understanding” of history.

Democracy in South Korea changed this by bring different voices to the table. Out of an official “correct understanding” grew a variety of understandings. The media usually groups these understandings into left or right, liberal or conservative, but the distinctions are not always that simple.

North Korea, by contrast, remains a dictatorship, where citizenship is defined as obedience to the “Fatherland” and patriotism as loyalty to “great leaders.” In many ways, North Korea is an extension of colonial period ideas.

To work, however, school history needs a clear simple narrative. This issue lies at the heart of most debates about history. The problem with developing a narrative in Korean history is that it must cover the long history of Koreans as well as the short history of the two Korean states. The further back you go, the broader the consensus on an appropriate narrative. As in other school history books, difficulties arise in dealing with developments from the late Joseon period to the present, but two things make it especially difficult for South Korea: colonialism and division.

The importance of the colonial experience must never be underestimated and school histories reflect this. Korea is rightly cast as a victim of late 19th-century imperialism that destroyed a number of other nations. Japan is rightly cast as an aggressor that attempted to destroy the Korean national identity through forced assimilation. The weakness of the Joseon Dynasty and rise of a merchant class that collaborated with the Japanese remain points of contention in this narrative.

The division of Korea into two hostile states and the war that followed remain extremely contentious. During the years of dictatorship, the dominant narrative was that communists in North Korea caused the division and later invaded South Korea in an attempt to conquer the entire peninsula. The U.S. is cast as a savior that prevented South Korea from being conquered and that continues to help protect Korea from a future invasion.

During the politically fervent 1980s, the established narrative of division came under attack as the younger generation began to question the assumed benevolence of the U.S. The American role in division came under scrutiny as did its role in supporting dictatorships that abused human rights, eventually leading toward a view of the U.S. as an imperialistic power that needed to be expelled.

The critical narrative of the ’80s has much in common with the narrative in North Korea, but it is not pro-North Korean because it is essentially a critique of dictatorship and the outside forces that supported it. The problem with the narrative is that it remains frozen in the ’80s. South Korea has evolved into a vibrant democracy and has joined the ranks of the advanced nations. These are substantial accomplishments that now need to be incorporated into the historical narrative.

The key to overcoming the current impasse over school history is to recognize that democracies allow different understandings of history that, in Korea’s case, these include the established narrative, the ’80s critique, and recent developments that have yet to find a narrative home. In the end, using state-authored textbooks as a way to enforce a “correct understanding” of history undermines the democracy that Koreans have fought so hard to build.

By Robert J. Fouser

Robert J. Fouser, a former associate professor of Korean language education at Seoul National University, writes on Korea from Ann Arbor, Michigan. — Ed.