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The Third International Forum on Historical Reconciliation in East Asia

During the pre-modern era, delegates from Korea occasionally met with delegates from Vietnam in Beijing China and they exchanged poets and stories with each other. During this contemporary era, the two countries exchange great amount of material and human resources directly thanks to the development of modern transport. While people from the two countries respected each other and exchanged poets and stories in the past, today misunderstandings often occur between the two countries because there is insufficient dialogue between the two which in turn brings about lack of understanding.

Common examples are labor-management problems within Korean companies in Vietnam and the discord between the Korean mother-in-law and the Vietnamese daughter-in-law. In my opinion, the situation can be improved by education of history and use of media which can play an important role in facilitating conversations. Korea and Vietnam have similarities in their histories in that the two countries have been influenced by the Chinese culture, but the level of understanding between the two countries is still far less. It is therefore very important that the two countries try to understand each other's history correctly.

With this intention, the Third International Forum on Historical Reconciliation in East Asia was held in Seoul for two days on 27th and 28th of August under the title of "Increase of Mutual Understanding between Korea and Vietnam through History Education." There were three presenters from Korea, another three presenters from Vietnam, and three more were invited from China, Japan and Australia one person from each country to hear cases in other countries.

According to the presenters from Vietnam, the relations between the two countries have become closer and more Vietnamese people are now interested in the Korean history and culture since the two countries normalized their diplomatic relations in December 1992. In line with this, universities in Vietnam have established Korean studies departments and the Korean language has become one of the most preferred foreign languages among young Vietnamese people. Also, a great number of books and theses have already been published. However, according to the Vietnamese presenters, sufficient time is not allocated for teaching Korean and the quality of the lecturers should be improved a lot as well. The lecture content is only basic across the board and a lot of time is will be taken to reach the professional level. Presenters from Korea said that so many errors have been found in publications and correcting them is

Medium to long-term plans needed for cultivating talent

There is another problem in Vietnam that has to be solved for the growth of Korean studies. Students enrolling in the department of Korean studies usually have the aim to get employment from Korean companies after graduation and virtually none of them want to continue to study in their career. Therefore, medium to long-term plans are needed to attract good talented students to the Korean studies and to make them study further in Korea for master and doctoral degrees. The government or various institutions of Korea have to provide support to correct the situation, according to Korean presenters, so Korea should come forward in this matter.

On the other side, Korean presenters claimed that the level of understanding of the Vietnamese history is very basic among Korean people and vice versa. It is mainly because Southeast Asian countries including Vietnam are thought of as underdeveloped in Korea, and Korean people think that they can only learn from America and other advanced European countries.

In this regard, scholars from Japan and Australia had a similar opinion. In Japan, according to the presenter, professors belonging to Humanities Departments treat Southeast Asia and Africa as minor regions and usually they do not feel the need to study the histories of these regions. The Australian scholar critically mentioned that nationalism has been strengthened in the Southeastern countries, former colonies of powerful European nations, since the Second World War and these countries tend to stress their own histories only without trying to understand the histories of their neighbors.

Paying attention to the similarities and differences between Korea and Vietnam

Our ignorance about the history and culture of Vietnam is exposed through our middle and high school textbooks as there are a lot of errors found in them. There is not much difference in our media. Therefore, it is necessary to write correct history textbooks for middle and high school students in order to have the Vietnamese history understood correctly. It was also mentioned that comparing Korean and Vietnamese histories instead of just teaching the Vietnamese history will be useful to arouse interest among students.

Media's cooperation is much needed in distributing the history and culture of Vietnam. According to a survey about the articles of our media on Vietnam, the internet report says that 64% of the media coverage on Vietnam is about economic topics (41%) and Vietnam War (23%). Only 3% is allocated to culture. This unbalanced information or shortage of information draws a line of limit in our understanding Vietnam. The researcher claims that information receivers need to understand the limit of provided information and they should be more active in taking information. But, it is not easy for ordinary people to have such an attitude. Therefore, according to the presenter, efforts should be made on the side of media to provide correct and balanced information. Also, a number of presenters and discussion participants said that it is necessary to offer lectures and publish books targeting the general public.

Another and final important point was that attention should be paid to the differences between Korea and Vietnam while there are similarities in history and culture between the two countries. For example, the same Confucian culture has influenced the two countries, but the two societies are different a lot even in this respect. We need to look at the differences in thoughts about fulfilling one's filial duty and viewing women as inferior to men.

Until now, a lot of conferences have just been held for discussions and no fruit has been gathered. I hope that the event will produce a real effect this time. The fruit should be seen first in textbooks and media of the two countries without errors that have existed.

As discussed in the above, the forum organized by both countries' national commissions for UNESCO and Northeast Asian History Foundation under the banner of 'Enhancing Mutual Understanding between Korea and Vietnam through History Education' was a very meaningful event. I hope such an event will be organized on a continual basis.