뉴스레터

In cooperation with the International University of Ulaanbaatar (president Nam Ki-yeong) located in Mongol’s Ulaanbaatar, the Foundation hosted the “2019 workshop on Korean history and the history of Korea-Mongol relations by Mongolian history teachers” for Mongol’s 36 history and social studies teachers at the university’s international conference hall May 28-29. The workshop was held under the main theme of “Xiongnu and Korea’s ancient history”, with lectures delivered by six experts. The themes were Xiongnu’s history (Bartsureng, Institute of History and Archaeology, Mongolain Academy of Sciences), life and customs in Xiongnu (Namjil, Mongol International University of Ulaanbaatar), outcomes of archaeological research into Xiongnu (Erekzen, Institute of History and Archaeology, Mongolian Academy of Sciences), Gojoseon and Xiongnu (Park Seon-mi, Northeast Asian History Foundation), correlations between Xiongnu’s fine arts and Korea’s ancient fine arts (Jang Seok-ho, Northeast Asian History Foundation), and comparison of education on Xiongnu’s history in Mongol and Korea (Yeo Byeong-mu, Mongol International University of Ulaanbaatar).

The “workshop on Korean history and the Korea-Mongol history of relations” for history teachers of Mongol’s secondary schools first began in 2014. The workshop was planned to boost understanding of Korean history, resolve different views on the history of Korea-Mongol relations, and to nurture young pro-Korean Mongolians who also know Korea well. As everyone knows, China and Japan established diplomatic ties with Mongol much earlier than Korea, and have extensive exchanges and cooperation in culture and education as well as in diplomacy and economy. Thus, the history textbooks of Mongol’s secondary schools contain no small quantity of narratives related to these countries, whereas there are few, if any, related to Korean history.

Fortunately, the Mongol International University of Ulaanbaatar, the city’s education office, and Korea’s embassy in Mongol actively helped this event proceed smoothly. The university provided human and material resources including the classrooms needed for this event, and the education office took charge of selecting history teachers, administering participating teachers during the workshop period, and conducting administrative work related to training programs in Korea for excellent teachers invited by the Foundation. The Korean embassy also cooperated directly and indirectly to hold the event successfully. The event was hosted by the Korean embassy in 2016-17 when the Foundation did not have the capacity to do so.

This assistance has resulted in six such workshops thus far, and about 40 teachers have taken related classes each year. As a result, more than 200 Mongolian history teachers have taken part in these programs and received certificates of completion. After every workshop, the Foundation has selected five high-performing teachers through exams and invited them to Korea so that they could have opportunities to take special lectures by experts on Korean history, interact with Korea’s secondary school teachers, and visit historical and cultural sites and industrial complexes in Korea. Meanwhile, this workshop has become an annual academic seminar and a mini-festival awaited eagerly by Mongol’s history teachers.

After the workshop, we had time for questions and answers with participating teachers and for them to write what they felt about the event. The questions and writing conducted there were almost identical. To summarize, the teachers expressed gratitude to the Northeast Asian History Foundation, the International University of Ulaanbaatar, and to the other organizations that had planned and organized the workshop, and evaluated that the two-day curriculum and progress were systematic and that the lecture content was very meaningful. In positively evaluating the lecturers’ classes that had made use of historical records, archaeological relics, and map data, the Mongol history teachers promised to apply such teaching methods to their own classes. Some of them expressed their resolve to “deliver accurate content properly”, saying that teachers were supposed to act as a bridge to deliver accurate information.

It was no small number of teachers that positively evaluated the fact that lectures on ancient history like “Xiongnu” were the first given. They expressed hope for subsequent classes, while requesting opportunities to take lessons consecutively rather than at once. They also expressed views that the lectures helped them to “understand how to separate East Asian history from Chinese history”, and that these programs “will contribute to studying history in Northeast Asia as well as Korea-Mongol history.” Some teachers stated frankly, “We were both glad and ashamed upon hearing Xiongnu’s history from Korean scholars.” Others said, “The time flew in class, and the lectures were worth the time,” expressing hopes to take more lessons. There were also some who revealed that they felt more intimate with Korea than their everlasting neighbors China and Russia, and expressed hopes to visit Korea and resume training programs next year. Others unveiled plans to hold a writing contest next year when Korea and Mongolia mark the 30^th anniversary of diplomatic ties, and asked for information on scholarships and benefits related to studies in Korea. Praising Korea for making history a compulsory subject in the College Scholastic Ability Test and civil service exams, some teachers also claimed that Mongolia should follow in Korea’s footsteps. The majority of teachers asked for this event to be held regularly every year, and expressed regret at a lack of teaching aids while hoping for efforts to develop and distribute them.

The Northeast Asian History Foundation produced teaching aids for history teachers written in the Mongolian language (Descendants of Grey Wolf and Bear, 2018, Northeast Asian History Foundation) by correcting and supplementing scripts taught in the previous year’s workshop, and distributed them in Mongol’s secondary schools. These were given to teachers who participated in the workshop for free, along with ‘Korean History’, which was translated and published under the sponsorship of the Foundation in 2015. Providing these materials for Mongol’s history teachers, who were suffering from a definite shortage of books related to Korean history and the history of Korea-Mongol relations, will surely help to deliver that content to Mongolia’s growing young people. Of course, we will also publish teaching aids for Mongol’s history teachers by the end of the year by correcting and supplementing scripts taught in this year’s workshop and distribute them in schools. Efforts to publish and distribute these teaching aids will certainly bear fruit as a “series of the history of Korea-Mongol relations”.