24 September 2008

Update on Revisionist History

It's 10AM on Thursday, September 25th, in Seoul.

According to last night's prime-time television news (the government-owned KBS or the semi-private MBC, I couldn't tell), the Grand National Party, the ruling party of President Lee Myung-bak, also joined the calls for textbook revisions, echoing a more right-wing viewpoint advocated by the Ministry of National Defence and other government agencies.

Textbook publishers are vowing to resist the efforts, however, rightfully citing that history is to be fairly documented, not to be manipulated according to the whims of the prevailing political ideology. The most concession the publishers are willing to make is the toning down of the glowing reviews of the inter-Korean summits of 2000 and 2007; those events are seen by the right-wingers as kowtowing to the North Korean Communist regime through financial concessions (and also giving the Communists undeserved legitimacy).