On August 30, 2013, high school Korean History textbook authored by the New Right and published by Kyohaksa passed the final approval for certification. This paper aims to elucidate how the New Right beautified pro-Japanese collaboration and distorted the identity of the Republic of Korea through an analysis of the Kyohaksa textbook’s portrayal of the Japanese colonial period.
The New Right contends that the “colonial exploitation theory,” which emphasizes exploitation and oppression during the colonial period, is a groundless claim that distorts or exaggerates facts based on ethnic bias. Instead, they interprets the Japanese colonial period from the perspective of “colonial modernization theory.” From this standpoint, the New Right glorifies pro-Japanese collaborators as “pioneers of modern civilization.”
However, the New Right’s so-called colonial modernization theory, which embellishes the Japanese occupation as modernization, capitalization, and civilization, is far removed from both public sentiment and scholarly research findings. The New Right posits that the Republic of Korea was established primarily by pro-American forces representing liberal democracy and pro-Japanese factions representing the civilization movement. They further assert that the Republic of Korea was founded on the ideologies of liberal democracy and free-market economy.
Consequently, the Kyohaksa textbook authored by the New Right stated that “the First Constitution of the Republic of Korea was based on the fundamental ideology of liberal democracy.” Regarding this New Right claim about liberal democracy being the fundamental ideology of the Constitution, which embodies t he i dentity o f t he R epublic o f K orea, t he h istorical academia has judged it as “a distortion aimed at concealing the non-liberal democratic characteristics of the First Constitution.”
It is a widely accepted view in historical academia that the fundamental ideology of the First Constitution, which succeeded the Charter of the Founding of the Nation―a set of principles for future society agreed upon by independence movement forces―was not liberal democracy but “social democracy.” The historical academic community perceives the democracy of the Republic of Korea not as an “imported product” from foreign countries, but as a “historical formation” that was developed through the struggle against colonial oppression and discrimination.