The government Monday announced its plan to reintroduce a single state history textbook for secondary school students to address what it calls the predominantly left-leaning contents in current books.
Unveiling an administrative measure, the Ministry of Education said history textbooks for middle and high schoolers nationwide will be authored by the government starting in the 2017 school year.
The government published state school history textbooks under the authoritarian Park Chung-hee government in 1974. It relinquished the power to private publishers in 2011 under a government monitoring system.
Currently, history textbooks are published by eight private publishing companies after being approved by an independent textbook review committee of experts. Schools choose from any of the eight textbooks, while primary schools have a single set of state-authored history textbooks.
The ministry said the government-published textbooks will be named "Accurate History Textbooks."
The government has raised the need to forge a common understanding of history in a country where people are divided ideologically. It has also stressed the importance of ensuring students have a balanced recognition of history.
The change in the publication system is expected to trigger fierce resistance from opposition political parties, left-leaning historians and educators.
The main opposition New Politics Alliance for Democracy has proposed the ruling Saenuri Party conduct a parliamentary probe into the current publication system, saying that any change in the system requires a social consensus. (Yonhap)
