Seoul steps up education on Japan’s wartime sex slavery

Seoul said Wednesday it would strengthen education on Japanese sex slavery during World War II in the public school curriculum.

The ministries of gender equality and education announced they would jointly distribute supplementary textbooks on the comfort women issue, along with teaching aids including video clips and PowerPoint files, to 193 education offices and 800 public libraries starting this month.

The move follows Japan’s approval this week of new textbooks that downplay its wartime atrocities.

Scholars estimate that up to 200,000 women, mostly from Korea and China, were forced to work in brothels for Japanese soldiers during World War II. Many of the victims, euphemistically called “comfort women,” have died of old age; there are only 53 known surviving victims in South Korea.

The Korean public school textbooks currently in use only mention the victims briefly, sometimes in as little as a single sentence. History teachers’ use of the new materials will be encouraged ― but not required ― for a more in-depth education. All history teachers will also be given special education on the wartime atrocity.

“It’s up to each teacher to make their own decision on whether or not to talk more about the matter using the new materials,” said Kim Jae-ryon, the director general of women’s rights promotion bureau of the Gender Ministry.

“But they will be encouraged (by the government) to use the materials as much as they can. They will also be encouraged to talk about the issue when they are talking about human rights, peacebuilding and how to prevent sexual violence.”

The materials, written by school teachers and currently being reviewed by academic and civic experts, will have three versions for elementary school children, middle school students and those who attend high school, respectively.

All the materials for both teachers and students will also be available for the public to browse or download online.

Nam Sang-gu, a researcher at the state-funded Northeast Asian Foundation, said the materials emphasized the importance of peacebuilding and overcoming the aftermath of military conflicts. Nam participated as one of the writers.

“While our goal is to educate our children about what happened and what we should remember so such tragedy does not repeat in the future, we also don’t want them to form a negative sentiment against Japan as a whole,” he said. “In the material we also talk about how there are people in Japan who empathize with the victims and have worked for their rights and compensation.”

Seoul has made repeated demands for an official apology and legal reparations for the victims, but Tokyo claims that the issue of compensation was settled in the 1965 Korea-Japan Normalization Treaty.

Earlier this week, Japan’s Education Ministry approved updated versions of middle school textbooks that added stronger claims to the easternmost Korean islets of Dokdo while softening descriptions of its wartime aggression.

Meanwhile, 56.2 percent of Korean parents said they preferred state-authored history textbooks, while 56.1 percent of teachers said they preferred materials penned by independent historians and experts, according to a 2014 survey organized by Korea Institute for Curriculum and Evaluation.

Following last year’s controversy surrounding a history textbook published by private publishing house Kyohak Publishing Co., which was opposed by left-leaning civic groups for their “overly favorable” depiction of Japan’s 1910-45 colonization of Korea among other things, the Education Ministry is currently considering whether to replace all history textbooks with state-authored ones.

Currently, only elementary school textbooks are authored by the government, while middle and high school students use materials penned and published by private publishers.

The ministry is to announce its decision in September.

By Claire Lee (dyc@heraldcorp.com)