A couple of weeks ago we learned about a picture in a Singaporean elementary school text (you heard it here first!) that showed a couple of Korean homeless people in a subway station as part of a unit on residences. They were only identifiable as Korean, or rather in Korea, because of some Korean letters on a sign. Nevertheless Koreans became rather indignant and demanded the Singapore government alter the textbooks. It worked.
The description next to the photo says, ``Even with limited land, our government is able to provide sufficient housing for the people.'' South Korean officials see that line as an insinuation that the South Korean government fails to do so.
South Korea's education ministry came under criticism after the photograph and the text were first reported by a Korean in Singapore on the Web site late last month. The ministry had pledged to have them withdrawn as soon as possible.
``We heard it from the Korean Embassy in Singapore,'' a ministry official was quoted by Yonhap news agency as saying. ``Singapore said that it will use a different photo in a textbook that will be printed next year.''
The official said that Singapore will not use a Korean picture again as the textbook explains the types of housing in the world in general terms.
Fuck you. Seriously, fuck these insecure whiners who take every remotely positive rendering of South Korea and take it as a testament to Korean superiority, and who work tirelessly to find anything that could be construed as negative and then bitch about the fruit of their labors. Fuck you and grow the fuck up. It's people like you who do far worse damage to Korea's image than some textbook. No word on if Korea's own textbooks are being patrolled so vigilantly for misrepresentations and biased views of foreign cultures.
People are certainly on the lookout here for quote-unquote distortions of Korean history, though, in books both domestic and foreign. The former as they bicker over what happened during occupation and the Korean War, and the latter as they pretend some Korean kingdom or other did something important a long time ago, or whatever.
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