Bruce Cumings and Park Noja speak out against rewriting Korean history in textbooks.

The Joongang Ilbo interviewed these two foreign Korea scholars about all the talk about historical revisionism in Korean textbooks. An excerpt:

The ministry says the texts should be revised because some phrases used deny the country’s legitimacy and hurt the national pride. Such sections include portions that say Korea won its independence because of the allied victory over Japan - which also contributed to the division of the Korean Peninsula - the ministry said in the guidelines.

However, the scholars said history is not about pride.

“History is not supposed to teach pride - unless we are talking the nationalistic versions of history like the ones that dominated South Korea under the late President Park Chung Hee and still dominate North Korea,” Tikhonov said.

Damn right.