hankyoreh

Bruce Cumings is the Gustavus F. and Ann M. Swift Distinguished Service Professor in History at the University of Chicago and the author of several books, including “Korea’s Place in the Sun: A Modern History” (1997) and “North Korea: Another Country” (2004).

In an interview with The Hankyoreh conducted via email and published in the print edition of the newspaper on November 26, Cumings discussed his perspective on the issue of history textbook selection in South Korea. The growth of the issue into a controversy has largely been precipitated by the government’s attempts to revise the textbook “A Modern and Contemporary History of Korea” in collaboration with the conservative New Right organization. Textbook authors have since voiced objections to the revisions and educators and parents have voiced objections to reports that the government was trying to pressure individual principals into using the government’s preferred textbook.

Cumings is critical of the administration’s handling of the textbook selection process and was one of the people who signed a statement released November 11 by the Organization of Korean Historians with the support of 676 scholars, 562 from Korea and 114 from abroad. The statement said that the Lee Myung-bak administration’s interference with a school’s ability to choose its history textbook was political and has diminished a student’s right to an education.

Bruce Cumings: I think the vast majority of scholars in Korean Studies in the U.S., Korea and elsewhere think that governments have no business sticking their noses into what historians write, or what responsible authors and editors choose to include in textbooks. Any American presidential administration that did that would be seen as a laughing stock.

A: The Lee administration is living in the past, still remembering the way Park Chung-hee and Chun Doo-hwan operated. It is very anachronistic for politicians to think that they can control history, or history textbooks.

A: After ten years that were truly new and different in postwar Korean history, the Lee administration is trying to turn the clock back, and to deny the enormous progress that has occurred since 1997 under Kim Dae Jung and Roh Moo-hyun, in gaining a fuller understanding of postwar history, in furthering reconciliation among people in the South and with the North, and in dramatically changing the attitude of the general population in the ROK toward the North.

A: Legitimacy is not something to be gotten by controlling textbooks, or manufacturing an historical line. It can only come from the people, as they come to recognize the correctness and authority of a government. Instead of gaining legitimacy, the Lee administration is acting like an ostrich, sticking its head in the sand at the sound of bad historical news. Even worse, they are acting like the right-wing Japanese, trying to paper over difficult issues while claiming to protect “national pride.” The new history produced in the past 20 years in the ROK, uncovering many thorny and tragic problems, is actually the best path toward a reconciliation among people of very different perspectives and experiences in the South, between the victimizers and the victims, and has also helped the reconciliation between North and South.

A: Students are seekers of truth, and although they also want to be proud of their country, they have utter contempt for authorities who would deny them access to the best historical information and scholarship. When someone tries to do that, as the ROK did for many decades, the result is that young people think that everything they have heard from the authorities is a pack of lies -- and then they truly lose pride in their leaders and their country. An example is this: my friend Suh Dae-sook proved in his 1968 book that Kim Il Sung was a genuine fighter against the Japanese for a decade after the Manchurian incident, going through all kinds of trials and difficulties -- all scholars know this, and have known it at least since 1968. Yet students were told for decades that Kim was an “imposter” who stole the name of a great patriot. Here is the result: two decades later when Professor Suh delivered a lecture about Kim’s background at Seoul National University, the whole room erupted in raucous cheers! So, it is self-defeating to try to hide the truth from students. Sooner or later, it will come out.

Q: It has been almost nine months since the launch of the Lee administration. Since then, there have been some dramatic incidents such as the candlelight demonstrations. I think you have been monitoring the things Korea has undergone. How do you evaluate the Lee administration as a whole?

A: This administration has made mistake after mistake, and has gotten nothing for it. They cozied up to the Bush administration, the most unpopular in American history (and perhaps in the world), just at the point where Bush was a lame duck. They purposely alienated the North, just as Bush was turning toward engagement with Pyongyang -- and the result was, no one in Washington or in the 6-Party Talks pays much attention to Seoul’s viewpoint. They are now trying to bury all the new history we have learned about the colonial and postwar periods, and this only makes young people want to know more -- they want to know exactly what the administration is trying to cover up. All the new history has been squeezed out of the toothpaste tube by a lot of courageous historians, and there is no way to get it back into the tube. It’s as simple as that: it can never work.

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