The Korean government aims at surpassing the 20 million mark in annual number of visitors
to the country.
While such goal reflects the appeal that Korea has as a major tourist destination in the
world, the image that the country has overseas seems to be far and away from being correct,
in terms of facts that is.
From incorrect names and wrong facts, we take a look at how and why some foreign textbooks
contain false information about Korea, and what is being done to mend such issue.
Our News feature tonight, with Lee Ji-won.
There are over 10-million tourists visiting Korea every year.
What is their image of the country?
On the other hand, there are some whose image of Korea is not only
negative, but also incorrect.
"How did so many people overseas end up learning misleading and wrong information about Korea?
I came to the Foreign Textbook Library to find out more."
Unlike Chinese or Japanese history contained in these books, Korean history is scarcely
mentioned if not at all, while some of the books that do, have incorrect and misleading
information.
For instance, a number of textbooks still describe Korea as an aid receiving country,
or have Korea's Dokdo island as Japanese territory.
A research showed that the most errors found in foreign textbooks regarding Korea are historical
facts.
"When Korea was poor, there was no way to promote the country to the world.
So, the world learned about Korea through documents from China and Japan."
In order to tackle this issue, the Ministry of Education established the so-called Division
of Understanding Korea Project, which aims at revising foreign textbooks and correcting
the errors in them.
So far, a total of some 3-thousand textbooks from about 100 countries have been revised.
The second most common errors found in foreign textbooks are Korean geographical locations.
British and French maps from the 18th century, recorded the sea east of the Korean Peninsula
as the “Sea of Joseon".
The same record can be found in Japanese maps from 1844 and 1853.
But during the Japanese colonization from 1910 to 1945, Japan one-sidedly changed the
name of the sea, to “Sea of Japan“, and the name is still being printed wrongly in
foreign textbooks.
Efforts to correct these kinds of errors are also made by Korean groups overseas.
Thanks to the continuous work by Korean nationals living in the U.S. state of Virginia, the
correct name of the East Sea was legally corrected in all textbooks and maps.
Likewise, books in Tasmania, an island state off Australia's south coast, were also corrected
with the right name.
The majority of errors regarding Korea's history and geography found in foreign books are originated
from Japan's history distortions.
This video posted by Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Youtube last year, claims
that Korea’s miracle on the Han River, or the rapid postwar recover of the country,
was possible thanks to Japan’s aid on various infrastructures.
This, in addition to Japan's recurrent sovereignty claims of Korea's Dokdo Island, as stated
in Japanese textbooks.
To mend and correct such distortions, the Voluntary Agency Network of Korea, commonly
known as VANK, was established as Korea’s first ever internet-based diplomatic organization.
VANK searches for wrong information about Korea on the web, as well as in textbooks
in order to revise incorrect facts.
"Maybe, it’s our fault that we never provided the world with the right information about
us... and instead, kept on blaming China and Japan.
But now, we are striving to change that by providing the right information ourselves.
It takes a long time... but I think this is better than just getting angry about it."
The results of 17 years of research and revision efforts by 130-thousand volunteers are some
500 corrected errors from various global media outlets, such as National Geographic, Dorling
Kindersley and Microsoft.
"It might take 50 years to correct distorted history, but it only takes one day to teach
the world about Korea ourselves, IF we do it first.
With this thought in mind, we are further expanding our activities to promote the correct
facts about Korea.
"
Korea may have achieved a rapid economic growth, but the world now needs to know the real Korea,
a Korea that is based on correct information and facts.
Lee Ji-won, Arirang News.