Bet you 1,000 won that you can guess what foreign textbooks are doing to Korean history.

They're distorting it, that's what they're doing! The Korea Times has the story, so does The Marmot's Hole:

During a parliamentary inspection of the ministry Tuesday, Rep. Rhee Beum-kwan said many inaccuracies are regrettably shown in history textbooks of 25 countries.

According to the lawmaker, a Uruguayan textbook states that Korea uses a Chinese language as its mother tongue and a Singaporean one says the nation was a colony of Russia and then Japan.

An Italian history book describes Korea as still under military dictatorship and a Jordanian schoolbook published in 2003 says Buddhism is a state religion in Korea, he added.

Rhee showed a Paraguayan textbook which says Korea used to be a colony of Portugal, which made members of the National Assembly's Committee on Foreign Affairs, Trade and Unification and Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan chuckle.

The punchline:

The legislator urged Minister Yu to fix the wrong content and make an effort to monitor the history textbooks of foreign countries, stressing the need to give proper information to foreigners.

``According to education ministry reports, people become biased toward foreign countries based on what they learn and experience between six and 14 years old,'' he said. ``That's why we have to pay attention to schoolbooks of other nations.''

Indeed.







I know it's none of the foreign minister's business, but maybe he could direct one of his colleagues to check out his own country's books and presentation of foreign cultures. I'll direct your attention again to an old standby, the "culture tips" in the elementary school teachers' guides and the black face used in the sixth grade fashion show skit.


Presenting Uganda. Clearly a distortion because the spear is missing.

The context is a skit demonstrating the traditional clothing of various countries around the world. Korea had hanbok, the US had a cowgirl, and Ugunda had that. Also might want to check out what VANK is doing with foreign cultures. Ironic coming from an organization so hypersensitive to what foreign countries think about South Korea. Or, rather, so hypersensitive since foreign countries don't think about South Korea.

Run a search in the local papers or in the blogs for more cases of miseducation in Korean schools. For example, 57% of students don't know when the Korean War started or who started it, and half of high school students failed their National History Exam a couple years ago. I've touched on the topic of textbook miseducation earlier here. Yes, it happens all over the world, but I'll remind readers that this isn't Brian in McCandless Township.