By comparing the description of modern history in 8 different versions of 『Korean History』 high school textbooks published in 2014, this paper examines political bias prevailing in the history textbooks, which emerged as an important social issue these days. Major subjects for analysis are topics included in 8 versions of textbooks, such as the nature of the Cold War, policies of the U.S. and Soviet Union towards Korea after the Liberation, evaluation of major political powers after the Liberation, and the Korean War. These subjects have often been targets for criticism by conservative press and intellectuals for being described from a leftist perspective. Directly adopting a so-called ‘New Right’ perspective, a historical view held by the conservative Korean political elites, Publisher Gyohak-sa’s history textbook puts all the responsibility of initiating and causing the Cold War, division of the Korean Peninsula, and the Korean War upon the Soviet Union, North Korea and the Communists. However, such description of modern history is an extremely biased and distorted one which cannot be found even among the new legitimist scholars such as John L. Gaddis and William Stueck, who represent conservative voices of the overseas academia in regards to the Cold War and the Korean War. Moreover, despite the arguments of conservative press and the authors of the Gyohak-sa textbook that the rest of the seven versions have been leaning leftwards in their description of modern history, those versions have been strengthening conservative descriptions overall after accepting recent instructions from the Ministry of Education.
카카오톡
페이스북
블로그