U.S. Gets a Bad Name in South Korean Schools

Here’s a pop quiz about the United States.

The question comes from course material distributed to many South Korean students, who were asked which of the following descriptions of America is incorrect:

1) The world’s leading arms-exporting country.

2) The world’s most heavily nuclear-armed country.

3) The world’s leader in chemical weapons research.

4) The world’s most peace-loving country that never once was at war with other countries.

Even as the South Korean government tries to keep anti-American demonstrators off the streets, such sentiments are alive and well in many of the nation’s public schools.

The above question was part of a supplemental teaching package on the war in Iraq that was distributed in March by the Korea Teachers and Educational Workers Union. Other questions in the quiz, which was given to about 400,000 students, suggested that the U.S. wants to destroy North Korea, along with Iran, Cuba, Syria and Libya. The package also included graphic photographs from the 1991 Persian Gulf War of Baghdad in flames and injured Iraqi children.

During a class on the U.S. military role in South Korea, one teacher in Koyang showed her seventh-graders a photograph from police archives of a Korean prostitute who had been murdered and sexually assaulted with an umbrella by an American soldier.

The unconventional teaching materials have sparked controversy in the schools -- so much so that one might say an ideological war is raging for the hearts and minds of South Korean youth.

In one corner is the union, which represents 94,000 of the country’s 360,000 public school teachers and has a long history of political activism. Opposing it is a group of conservative educators, parents, principals and other teachers who are banding together to keep overtly political messages out of the curriculum.

The antiwar materials were withdrawn from the classrooms in May -- not because of complaints, but because major fighting in the U.S.-led campaign against Iraq had ended. The union’s teachers, however, say they will not change their approach to education when the new school year starts in September.

“It is necessary to teach students about the consequences of war and why humankind should oppose any kind of war,” said Park Seok Gyun, a high school teacher interviewed at a regional union office in Koyang. Park said he not only gave his students the quiz but also showed them television footage of antiwar activists who had gone to Baghdad as “human shields.”

“I didn’t consider this to be anti-American,” he added. “It was teaching students the difference between right and wrong.”

The backdrop of the dispute is a surge in anti-Americanism, with the younger generation in particular voicing complaints about issues ranging from the conduct of U.S. troops in South Korea to the Bush administration’s tough stance toward North Korea and the war in Iraq.

U.S. officials in South Korea, which is nominally one of America’s closest allies, say they are worried that the schools might be encouraging such thinking.

“We don’t go around policing other countries’ scholastic materials, but this does seem to show a distorted picture of America,” said Ambassador Thomas Hubbard. “If that is what is being circulated in schools, I’m not surprised that many young Koreans voice unfavorable attitudes toward the United States.”

South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun has been awkwardly trying to steer a middle ground. Since taking office in February, he has called on anti-American activists to cool their street protests for fear that the demonstrations were harming the business environment in South Korea.

Faced with another potential embarrassment over the teaching materials, he concurred with the union’s position that the quiz was not anti-American while warning that “antiwar education should be encouraged but only as long as it is not anti-American, in consideration of our diplomatic relations.”

Under the South Korean education system, teachers or their unions have had the right since 2001 to bring supplemental teaching materials into the classroom. In theory, the course work should be approved by principals, but educators say that seldom happens.

The antiwar material went to only those students whose social studies teachers are union members, about 20% of the 12- to 15-year-olds in the system. Other quiz questions in the package focused on the hardships experienced by Iraqis after the 1991 war.

For example: Which of the following descriptions of Iraq after the Gulf War is incorrect?

1) Due to economic sanctions, infant mortality increased by 150%, and in some areas, 70% of newborns had leukemia.

2) The United States and Britain conducted a bombing campaign against Iraq for 11 years after the war, causing terror among the Iraqi people.

3) Cancer among Iraqi children increased by 700% because of depleted uranium left from the bombing.

4) The infant mortality rate of Iraqi children in 1999 was 300% higher than it was a decade earlier.

5) Not a single Iraqi starved to death after the Gulf War because of the extensive food relief program.

The course materials have inspired something of a backlash from other educators, who last month formed the United Citizens for Educational Community expressly to fight what they see as abuses by the union. “Their views are very radical and far outside the mainstream,” said Lee Sang Joo, a former education minister who is leading the drive.

Others complain that the teachers union, which until 1999 was illegal, also has introduced texts that appear sympathetic to North Korean interpretations of modern history.

Nothing, though, has raised such a ruckus in the school system as the photograph of the dead prostitute, which was shown in December to seventh-graders at a school in Koyang, a suburb of Seoul. The photo is from a 1992 murder for which a former American soldier, Kenneth Markle III, was convicted. He is serving a 15-year sentence in a South Korean prison, although many Koreans erroneously believe that he was allowed to return to the U.S. without being prosecuted.

The teacher who showed the photograph, Om Chang Seon, said she decided to do so because it was being widely shown on the Internet and at protests as part of the debate over the Status of Forces Agreement, which governs U.S. soldiers in South Korea. She noted that portions of the photograph of the naked corpse were obscured for the sake of decency.

“This is nothing that they couldn’t have seen elsewhere,” said Om, a soft-spoken 29-year-old who hardly looks older than some of her students. “Rather than giving our students canned education, we want to encourage them to think about what is going on in the world.”

Many parents in Koyang apparently did not agree.

“Some of them forced their way into my office, pushed me around and verbally accosted me,” Om said in an interview. She did not lose her job as a result of the incident, but Om said she was denied a promotion to teach eighth grade.

Koyang is a town of chockablock high-rises that are home to middle-class people affluent enough to buy their kids American brands; Gap T-shirts and Adidas sneakers seem particularly popular these days. But the children are more approving of American fashions than of American foreign policy.

“I didn’t like America much even before this,” said student Lee Dok Gi, 13, who was shown the photograph.

Americans “are always picking fights with other countries,” chimed in his friend, 14-year-old Kang Woo Seok, as the two headed to a basketball court outside the junior high school.

The boys said their parents were more upset about the sexual content of the photograph than about the politics.

“My parents said you need not know about a thing like this. But we already know,” the older boy said. “It was a terrible photograph, but I think it was necessary for us to see.”