This is what the Korean left does, re-write history to fit their political narratives:
Gyeonggi Governor Lee Jae-myung, a frontrunner among candidates for president from the ruling Democratic Party (DP), made bombshell remarks last week. In a trip to Andong, North Gyeongsang, his hometown, Lee said, “Pro-Japanese forces maintained their ruling system in collaboration with the U.S. occupation force in Korea after its liberation from Japanese rule.” His portrayal of South Korea as a country that “could not be founded in a clean way from the start” has stirred much controversy after Kim Won-wung, chairman of the Heritage of Korean Independence, called the American forces an “occupation force” and the Soviet forces a “liberation force” in a virtual speech to high school students earlier. Even after his comment triggered a sensation, Gov. Lee claimed that the U.S. forces defined themselves as an “occupying force,” urging his opponents to first reflect on their “lack of knowledge about history.”
The historical perspectives Lee has demonstrated are very inappropriate — and dangerous — for a presidential hopeful. His distorted view of history seems to have originated from the now-defunct theory widely shared by democracy activists in the past. But Lee’s views are wrong. While the Soviet military government established a Communist regime led by its puppet Kim Il Sung in North Korea, a divergent mix of the anti-Communist faction, the nationalist faction and the socialist faction fiercely competed with one another under the rule of the U.S. military government in South Korea.
Lee’s claim that South Korea was ruled by pro-Japanese forces after liberation is also misleading. The heads of the three branches of the government were all independence fighters. Our founding president Syngman Rhee and Shin Ik-hee, the founding speaker of the National Assembly, both fought against Japanese rule as top officials of the Provisional Government in China. Our first Chief Justice Kim Byung-ro also served as chairman of an influential anti-Japanese group. Ministers of the first government led by Syngman Rhee also were mostly independence fighters.
You can read more at the link, but the term liberation force I think is more appropriate to describe the US forces that moved into South Korea after the defeat of the Imperial Japanese during World War II. However, Korean leftists like the term occupation force that carries negative connotations while using liberation force to describe the Soviets. It is almost like the leftists wish the Soviet Union occupied the entire peninsula after World War II.
As far as the pro-Japanese comments, the US military initially kept Japanese government administrators in place until they could be replaced by a new Korean government. Would Lee Jae-Myung have preferred the disaster that was de-Bathification in Iraq when all the government officials were fired that help lead to the post-war chaos in that country? The keeping of Japanese administrator temporarily ended up being a wise decision that led to a smoother transition of power to the new ROK government.
It seems to me instead of erasing the history, the Bank of Korea should just put a plaque there explaining the history to people:
Shown in the top image is the word “priority” engraved in Chinese on the cornerstone of the Bank of Korea’s former headquarters in downtown Seoul, Friday. The bottom image shows the original calligraphy obtained by the country’s Cultural Heritage Administration, which confirmed the word was handwritten by Hirobumi Ito, the first resident general of Korea prior to the 1910-45 Japanese occupation of the peninsula. Korea Times file
Bank of Korea (BOK) Governor Lee Ju-yeol said Friday the bank is in talks with the Cultural Heritage Administration to possibly remove the engraving of the word “priority” written in Chinese on the cornerstone of the bank’s former headquarters in downtown Seoul.
“The BOK will be very quick in addressing the issue about Hiromubi Ito’s calligraphy and the strokes slanted down from the left to the bottom right which were found in the two characters of ‘jeong’ and ‘cho’ engraved on the foundation stone. The bank is exploring three options. After thorough discussions with the CHA, the bank will resolve the issue as quickly as possible,” the central bank chief told lawmakers on the sidelines of his participation in this year’s annual Assembly audit of the BOK.
Lee didn’t elaborate further, but he issued a public apology over the matter. The apology came a day after the CHA confirmed the writing engraved on the bank’s former headquarters was Hirobumi Ito’s handwriting.
Ito was the first resident general of Korea prior to the 1910-45 Japanese occupation of the peninsula. Ito was assassinated by Korean independence activist Ahn Jung-geun in Manchuria in 1909.
When in history has "the right side of history" denied overwhelming evidence of concentration camps that hold 80,000 to 120,000 men, women & children? Or defended, in the name of feminism, a state that gives impunity to its officials who rape? This profanes history and peace. https://t.co/2ig4hR5Rrm
It seems like the only thing controversial about the final version of the state sponsored history textbooks is the fact that it is an initiative from the Park Geun-hye administration:
State sponsored history textbooks [KBS World Radio]The Ministry of Education released Tuesday the final versions of controversial state-authored history textbooks for middle and high school students, which are supposed to go into use from 2018.
The ministry said it made some 760 edits to the textbooks after drafts were revealed to the public in November, using the feedback it received.
The most notable change is the official description of Aug. 15, 1948, as Foundation Day of the Republic of Korea. Some historians have argued that date should be described as the foundation of the government of the Republic of Korea, because the country was founded in 1919, with the founding of the provisional government in Shanghai by independence activists.
While the state-authored textbooks will call Aug. 15, 1948, Foundation Day of the Republic of Korea, the ministry said authorized private history textbooks can describe the date as the foundation date of the country or the government.
The ministry added that schools will still be able to opt between authorized private history textbooks and state-authored history textbooks from 2018, when the state-authored history textbooks will be put to use.
According to the ministry, other notable changes to the final versions of the state-authored textbooks include extended details on pro-Japan forces during the Japanese annexation of Korea from 1910 to 1945. The state-authored history textbooks admit that the government failed to make strong efforts to discover and take disciplinary action against pro-Japan forces.
The ministry also said the new textbooks admit the delay in the government’s efforts to get the facts straight on Jeju Island’s April 3rd Uprising. It is generally understood that the details of the brutal atrocities committed against suspected leftists on the island in 1948 were hushed up by the government until after the democratization movement of the country in the late 1990s.
The previous drafts of the state-authored textbooks were also criticized for overly praising the work of former President Park Chung Hee. The initial draft of the high school textbook spent four pages describing the former president’s positive achievements, while allotting only half a page for the negatives that accompanied them.
The revised and final version of the high school textbook, the ministry said, admits that Park’s Saemaul (New Village) Movement “had its limits.” But the textbook will still allot nine pages to history related to former President Park. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
You can read more at the link, but I don’t see how you can tell the modern history of Korea without a lot of pages on Park Chung-hee considering how long he ruled the country and the sweeping changes he made.
If you ever thought there was a lot of Kims, Parks and Lees in Korea you would be right:
“If you throw a stone from a hill in Seoul, chances are fifty-fifty that it would hit a Kim, Lee or Park.” So goes a Korean joke showing how common the three surnames are.
A recent census has reaffirmed this _ one in every five Koreans living within the country has the family name of Kim, according to a recent population and housing survey by Statistics Korea.
The number of people with Kim as their surname totaled 10.69 million or 21.5 percent of the total population of 51.07 million.
Coming in second and third on the list of most common surnames are Lee or Yi (14.7 percent) and Park (8.4 percent).
Following the big-three were Choe or Choi (4.7 percent), Chung (4.3 percent), Kang (2.4 percent), Cho (2.1 percent), Yun or Yoon (2.1 percent), Chang (2.0 percent) and Lim or Im (1.7 percent). [Korea Times]
You can read more at the link, which includes an interesting discussions about the origins of these three names.
If anyone is wondering below is what is being taught now a days in America’s colleges about 9/11. It is one thing to present an opposing view, but if students are penalized by the instructor for not agreeing with it as described in the article, than I have a problem with that. Has anyone recently been through a college course that teaches such anti-US propaganda liked described in the article?:
Not all of us will be mourning 9/11 victims and their families this Friday on the 14th anniversary of the attacks. Hundreds of college kids across the country will instead be taught to sympathize with the terrorists.
That’s because their America-hating leftist professors are systematically indoctrinating them into believing it’s all our fault, that the US deserved punishment for “imperialism” — and the kids are too young to remember or understand what really happened that horrific day.
Case in point is a freshman-level English class taught at several major universities across the country called “The Literature of 9/11” — which focuses almost entirely on writings from the perspective of the Islamic terrorists, rather than the nearly 3,000 Americans who were slaughtered by them. The syllabus, which includes books like “The Reluctant Fundamentalist” and “Poems from Guantanamo: Detainees Speak,” portray terrorists as “freedom fighters” driven by oppressive US foreign policies. [NY Post]
