[Editorial] A coup against the current administration?

Posted on : 2008-12-09 13:52 KST Modified on : 2008-12-09 13:52 KST

While on the one hand spending all its energy on distortions in history textbooks, the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology is said to have created some teaching material on modern and contemporary Korean history, the writing in which might be characterized as still being in draft form, and distributed it to roughly 10,000 elementary, middle and high schools. Titled The Miracle of History and composed of a booklet and some audio visual material, it is so close to being political propaganda that it even disregards conclusions about history that are part of the Korean Constitution. It is distressing that education officials have to produce such propaganda and educate our children with it.

The teaching material was created at the behest of the 60th Anniversary of National Foundation Commemoration Committee, an organization composed of scholars close to the government who have been behind the textbook distortion effort and the “national foundation day” controversy, media serving the administration and business groups. It is also the group that is trying to overcome the so-called “lost decade” and produce and spread the ideological basis for strengthening the old conservatives’ hold on power. Its contents, however, are so simple minded as to be infantile. It shows only history where the old establishment conservatives were victorious.

For example, in covering Syngman Rhee, there is no mention of the chaos of the period that followed South Korea’s liberation from Japan, the failure to purge people who collaborated with the Japanese during the colonial period, the division of the peninsula into North and South, the tragedy of the Korean War, his revisions of the Constitution to stay in power, or the assassination of his political enemies, the fraudulent election of March 15, 1960, and the April 19th Revolution. In discussing the Park Chung-hee years, there is no discussion of the coup he instigated to take over the country, the June 3rd Uprising against the restoration of South Korea-Japan relations, the Constitutional Amendment that allowed Park to serve three terms, the Yusin Constitution, the politics of manipulation, the human rights abuses, the sacrifices of and by workers and farmers, and imbalanced economic development policy. Naturally, there is no mention whatsoever of important milestones in the history of Korean democracy like the Busan-Masan Struggle, the Gwangju Massacre, or the June Struggle of 1987.

It is of course not an exaggeration to call modern Korean history miraculous, because despite the division of the peninsula and the Korean War and the unprecedented destruction of constitutional order under Rhee and Park and the human rights abuses and all the corruption, the country’s workers, farmers, intellectuals and students still cultivated economic development and achieved democracy. It was those working in factories and fields and who shed tears and blood in the streets who were behind this miracle. The administration of Lee Myung-bak, however, wants to make Syngman Rhee, Park Chung-hee and Chun Doo-hwan the main characters in that story.

What they are after is clear. They want to legitimize and perpetuate rule by the old establishment, Cold Warrior conservatives, those who enjoyed all the glory and prosperity during the dictatorship years, and by doing so maintained their privileges in our society. They want to ignore the Korean public’s misery during this horrible economic crisis and devote themselves to the game of power, and their ability to concentrate on that is just amazing. Since it praises dictatorship and coups d’etat, does that mean a coup against the current administration would be just fine? We would like to see an immediate end to this political agitation that drives back democracy and distorts history.

Please direct questions or comments to [englishhani@hani.co.kr]

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