뉴스레터

The 7th Jeju Forum for Peace and Prosperity was held at Haevichi Hotel in the City of Seogwipo, Jeju Island from May 31 to June 2, 2012. In this forum, the NAHF organized two sessions under the theme 'New East Asian and Challenges in History Education in the Global Age' for discussion focused on the status and challenges of East Asian history education.

Development of East Asian History Textbooks Triggered by Historical Conflicts

In the first session, NAHF President Chung Jae-jeong, the presider, reminded the audience that East Asian history was now an elective course taught in high schools across South Korea as of March 2012. And he presented topics we needed to consider: how East Asian history has been viewed in the past and how it should be viewed in the future; the feasibility of East Asian history that transcends the history of a single nation; and how historical sciences and history education should contribute to peace and prosperity in East Asia.

The first speaker, Professor Yu Yongtae of the Seoul National University, gave a comparative overview of the three history books recently published by South Korea, China, and Japan --『Modern and Contemporary History for Adults (大人のための近現代史: 19世 紀編)』, 『East Asian History (東亞史)』, and『Modern and Contemporary History of East Asia for All』-- from the perspective of the authors reflecting on the 'imperialistic nature' of their own countries. Professor Yu noted that the experts of the East Asian countries acknowledged the need for East Asian history different from the histories of their own countries, alluding to the feasibility of the regional history of East Asia. Professor Ahn Byung-Woo at Hanshin University remarked that a series of shocking events in neighboring countries, such as Japan's authorization of the 2001 Hushosha edition of history textbook and China's Northeast Project, had promoted South Korea to reflect on its history education centered on the history of its own country and led to its decision made in December 2006 to start working on East Asian history textbooks, which finally saw print this year.

However, there are still a lot of challenges ahead, as Professor Ahn pointed out, such as further studies, unified terminology, and training for teachers of East Asian history. Professor Miyake Akimasa at Chiba University introduced the experiment of the Tokyo Books edition of high school textbook of Japanese history, and proposed the ambitious plan of compiling East Asian textbooks that would replace the books of national history, such as Korean history, Japanese history, and Chinese history.

Political Landscape in Reality and New East Asian History

In the ensuing second session, presided over by Professor Miyajima Hiroshi of the Academy of East Asian Studies at Sungkyunkwan University, there was discussion focused on the significance and challenges ahead of South Korea's experiment on East Asian history education. Professor Fuma Susumu at Kyoto University presented his views on the concept of investiture, Joseon envoys, etc. and drew attention by asking controversial questions, such as "Is it appropriate to describe the 18th-century structure of East Asia as an investiture system in the textbooks?" and "Is it true that Joseon envoys to Edo 'served as messengers that introduced the advanced culture of Joseon to Japan' from the 18th century onward?" Professor Emeritus Wada Haruki at the University of Tokyo remarked that we would need to put the East Asian region in the perspective of how we should live now, and, in order to create a new history, we should think about ways to heal the war wounds inflicted by Japan, and to break away from the wars continuing for eighty years since the Sino-Japanese War, including the wars of fifty years led by Japan and the New Asian wars of thirty years such as the Vietnam War.

Professor Wang Xinsheng at Peking University noted that efforts made by researchers were failing to exert sufficient influence on society due to the huge gap of historical perception among the countries. In this context, Professor Wang suggested that given their political nature, collaborative studies of history should be regarded as long-term endeavors that required patience, and that we should keep a balanced view in national as well as regional history. Professor Chen Wenshou at Beijing Union University asserted that historically speaking, nation-states could not be said to have been the units of East Asia, nor is it true that a single country had continued to lead the regional history of East Asia. In particular, he emphasized that in East Asian history education, there was urgent need for a new understanding of the seas that had functioned as public goods in history.

Next, Professor Eckhardt Fuchs at the Georg-Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research of Germany warned against the rash assumption that sharing a common regional history would immediately lead to regional identity. In particular, Professor Fuchs advised the developers of regional history textbooks to avoid conflict between regional identity and national identity in the textbooks. Bae Young Dae, Deputy Director of the Culture Department, Joongang Ilbo, assessed that historical debates over the last 10 years in Korea had been over the nation's relations with its neighbors, coupled with domestic battles between conservatives and reformists, and that from the perspective of modernity, it was Korea's sense of pride in its industrial and democratic achievements made without any imperialist experience that made it the first country to develop and include an East Asian History course in the high school curriculum. As the last speaker, NAHF Research Follow Oh Byungsoo pointed out the challenges ahead, including how to determine the levels of the understanding of national history, East Asian history, and world history, and how to overcome the nation-centered descriptions of history. In particular, he stressed that the purpose of joint textbook development efforts didn't need to be to have a single historical perception, and that it would require pluralistic perceptions that could coexist, pluralism in communication, democracy and popularity.

Consensus Beyond the Perspective of Single-Nation History

These Jeju Forum sessions achieved consensus from the South Korean, Chinese, and Japanese intellectuals on the need for a new image of East Asian history that transcends the perspectives of single-nation history. Although there were subtle disagreements among the scholars of different nations, and the problems and challenges in the description of East Asian history were brutally pointed out, these sessions were very significant in that it allowed discussion on how to shape and teach new East Asian history.

As the pioneer of East Asian history education and experimentation, the NAHF confirmed the historical significance of the results of its efforts through this forum. But looking back, I could not help but think that the forum also left the NAHF the new challenge of building on its accomplishments to continue to have discussion and take actions to achieve peace in East Asia. That was the thought to myself after I finished the forum in Haevichi, where the sun shines first.