The Description and Transformation of Song Dynasty History in Korean High School World History Textbooks

Since the 2007 Revised Curriculum, the Korean education authorities have consistently maintained the policy of reducing the amount of content in textbooks. As a result, compared with the World History textbooks of the 7th Curriculum, the textbooks based on the current 2022 Curriculum have been reduced to about half their original length. The period of the Song, Liao, and Jin dynasties is no exception. Consequently, all textbooks are preoccupied with listing basic historical facts. This has led to history being presented as a very dry and monotonous discipline, reduced to mere factual knowledge. Moreover, current textbooks, despite their limited space, are burdened with the compulsion to include a variety of special sections and feature explanations. These special sections are meant to aid understanding of the main text. However, setting up excessive special features when even the basic explanation of historical facts is insufficient should be reconsidered. In fact, with each curriculum reform, roughly every seven or eight years, textbooks are “revised.” But in reality, this revision amounts to simply condensing existing textbooks according to the Ministry of Education’s guidelines. For this reason, despite repeated “revisions,” past errors or careless expressions continue to persist. Such inappropriate expressions and problems can be found throughout. Most serious of all are two perspectives that continue to be repeated in the description of Song Dynasty history in Korean World History textbooks. The first is the statement that “the adoption of civil governance (rule by civil officials) led to the weakening of Song military power.” The second is the claim that “Wang An-shi’s reforms aimed to protect the weak, while the opposition (the Old Law faction) represented the interests of large landowners and merchants.” The idea that the Song’s adoption of civil governance weakened its military power first appeared in some textbooks of the First Curriculum. It seems likely that Japanese textbooks influenced this view. Japanese textbooks of the 20th century also explained the weakening of Song military power as resulting from the adoption of civil governance. However, in Japan, such descriptions gradually disappeared after the 21st century. Yet Korean World History textbooks still remain under the influence of 20th-century Japanese textbooks. Furthermore, textbooks compiled under the 2015 Curriculum uniformly state that Wang An-shi’s reforms (the New Policies) were measures aimed at protecting farmers and small merchants, and that opposition arose because these reforms infringed upon the interests of large landowners. This interpretation has deep roots. It already appeared in textbooks based on the First Curriculum and has been repeated ever since. Interpreting the conflict between New Policy officials and Old Policy officials as being based on class interests is by no means appropriate. Such an interpretation stems from the materialist conception of history that dominated intellectual circles in the early to mid-20th century. In addition, the explanations of the Qingmiao Fa and the Muyi Fa are highly distorted. These errors and distortions have been repeated without change since the First Curriculum. The use of terms such as “New Law faction” and “Old Law faction” is also highly problematic. These terms, which carry a distinctly modern tone, were creations of Japanese academia in the early to mid-20th century.