Are Japanese Textbooks Accurately Describing the Korean March 1st Independence Movement?

Interesting analysis over at Popular Gusts in regards to the below Joong Ang Ilbo article which a Korean lawmaker is complaining about how Japanese textbooks depict the March 1st Korean independence movement back in 1919:

History textbooks in Korea and Japan are still riddled with inaccuracies in their descriptions of Korea’s March 1 Independence Movement 96 years ago, the catalysis of Korea’s fight against Japan’s colonial rule (1910-1945).

Rep. Han Sun-kyo, a lawmaker of the ruling Saenuri Party, told the JoongAng Ilbo on Thursday that he analyzed Korean and Japanese history textbooks he received from the Seoul-based think tank Northeast Asian History Foundation and Korea’s Ministry of Education and found the results troubling.

He said a “considerable number of Japanese history textbooks are distorting the facts or minimizing the significance of the March 1 Independence Movement.”

March 1, 1919, remains a touchstone of Korean nationalism as the day when activists declared Korea’s independence and triggered large-scale peaceful demonstrations against Japanese colonial rule (1910-1945).

One Japanese middle school history textbook published by Jiyusa says the March 1 independence movement in Seoul “initially was planned as a non-violent rally but gradually became a large-scale movement,” and that “the army was mobilized and because of a clash on both sides, there were many casualties.”  (……)

Korea has been alarmed by Japanese right-wingers’ historical revisionism, which glosses over or denies wartime aggressions and trivializes the victims of its colonial rule over Korea. (……)

But Han added that Korean history textbooks also have inaccuracies, and there are many cases where they “describe the non-violent March 1 movement as violent” or do not mention key events or figures such as Yoo Gwan-soon’s martyrdom  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

However, there is only one problem with the lawmakers complaints, the March 1st movement was violent.  Popular Gusts provides the analysis:

The problem is, the textbooks describing the independence movement as being “violent” are being accurate. While some of the Japanese dispatches during the Samil Uprising reported in the New York Times described violence on the part of demonstrators, I didn’t realize just how violent the protests were until I read Frank Baldwin’s “Participatory Anti-Imperalism:The 1919 Independence Movement” (Journal of Korean Studies, Volume 1, 1979, pp. 123-162). One assumes this contains some of the material in his dissertation, “The March First Movement: Korean Challenge, Japanese Response” (Columbia University, 1969). In his article, he notes that between March 1 and April 10, 1919, there were “approximately 667 peaceful demonstrations” as compared with “approximately 460 violent incidents.”   (…….)

The tale of “peaceful Samil demonstrations” serves the cause of depicting Koreans as a peaceful people beset upon by marauding outsiders; that is to say, victims with no responsibility for their actions. [Popular Gusts]

You can read much more act the link in regards to much of the South Korean myth making in regards to the March 1st Independence Movement. I always appreciate well documented historical analysis like this that cuts through the historical revisionism so prevalent in Korea today.