My name is Daniel. I was an English teacher in Seoul, South Korea, and I am now a writer with three published books including South Korea: Our Story by Daniel Nardini.
When my wife was a high school student, she learned about the terrible crimes and atrocities committed by the North Koreans during the Korean War, and the fact that North Korea was a totalitarian dictatorship. This information was provided in a government-approved textbook. While the information was accurate, it was nevertheless put into a government-approved textbook under the dictatorship of then South Korean President Park Chung Hee. These textbooks would be used until the presidency of Kim Dae Jung, when the government allowed for the use of private-published textbooks (under government approval at the time) in the classrooms. The new textbooks in South Korean classes mirrored the new Sunshine Policy of the time. This policy, and the textbooks, were carried over into the administration of President Roh Myoo-huhn. The textbooks that were used under Park Chung Hee and Chun Doo-hwan talked about the terrible things done by North Korea to justify Park and Chun's dictatorships. However, the new privately-published textbooks have serious inaccuracies of their own. One example is the use of the word "dictatorship" to describe both North Korea and South Korea. The word was used only twice to describe North Korea while it was used 28 times to describe South Korea. The problem here is that South Korea was a dictatorship for only certain periods of time; from 1953-1960, from 1961-1979, and from 1981-1988. North Korea, on the other hand, has always been a dictatorship since its founding in 1948. Then there is the case of the start of the Korean War. The new textbooks state that the start of the Korean War was due to the conflict between the two Korea's from 1948 onwards. This is in fact not true. Yes, there were border conflicts, and a vicious guerrilla war in South Korea (to an extent in North Korea too), but the actual attack against South Korea was in fact a carefully planned invasion by North Korean leader Kim Il-sung. We know this from the released archives of the Moscow records where Soviet dictator Josif Stalin and Kim Il-sung had held meetings to plan the invasion of South Korea. These and other inaccuracies in the private-published textbooks are among the reasons why the South Korean government wanted to change the textbooks.
