[LINK] "Korean Heroine Tortured by Japan Haunts Pages of History"

[rfmcdonald]

Bloomberg's Sam Kim writes about East Asia's history wars, starting from South Korea.

A 17-year-old Korean girl tortured to death for opposing Japanese colonial rulers nearly a century ago has become the latest touchstone of the nationalism that is shadowing Asia’s economic rise.

Yu Gwansun became known as Korea’s Joan of Arc after she lost her parents and was imprisoned during a 1919 uprising against Japan’s 1910-1945 colonization. South Korean Education Minister Hwang Woo Yea wants to know why she doesn’t appear in half of the nation’s newly approved high-school history textbooks. He’s considering putting the government in charge of writing history.

Textbooks have become part of the front line in East Asia’s propaganda war as recent administration changes in China, Japan and Korea see leaders fomenting nationalism to bolster their hold on power. In South Korea’s schools, history books shape the attitude of the next generation not only toward neighboring countries but also of the legacy of former dictator Park Chung Hee, the current president’s father.

[. . .]

In South Korea, the rewriting of history has been influenced by factions in the tumultuous domestic politics of the past century, including 35 years of rule by Japan, the three-year Korean War that cemented the division of the peninsula and a series of dictators in the South who oversaw rapid economic growth and fierce anti-communist campaigns.

“Modern history is extremely contentious in South Korea and almost anything since 1910 is controversial,” Charles K. Armstrong, a professor of history at Columbia University, said by e-mail. Some South Korean conservatives think the left-of-center governments of Kim Dae Jung and Roh Moo Hyun from 1998 to 2008 tilted history textbooks to their side, he said.