「동아시아사」 서술에서 영토 문제를 어떻게 기술할 것인가

How to deal with the ‘territory issues’, in the「History of East Asia」class

The「History of East Asia」was included in the 2009 s Official Curriculum for High Schools as an Optional class. Adopting an East Asian perspective which should view the history of East Asia(including Korea) as part of the global history, this「History of East Asia」class could serve as an opportunity for the students to deal with the history of regions, and enable the students to link and connect their own view of the history of Korea and their view of the history of the world. In other words, the virtue that could and should be pursued in this class would be an establishment of productive relationships with other countries. Previous trends of history education and the education of Korean history in particular were trapped inside a somewhat Sino-centric attitude and also the boundaries of the so-called Orientalism. So in the future, such attitude should be replaced by a will to maintain mutually beneficial relationships with our neighbors. In this class, past issues of the territorial nature such as the Gan-do region issue and the Dok-do island issue could be dealt with. In case of the Gan-do region issue, it should be treated carefully, even though current conflicts such as the one that was originated with the Chinese Northeast Project should be taught in the class nonetheless. On the other hand, the Dok-do island issue, being not only a territorial issue of East Asia but also an issue that should be resolved in terms of rightly understanding the past history that existed between Korea and Japan, should be presented to the students of this class in that regard as well. Students should be aware that in order to build reconciliation and cooperation in East Asia, a common and proper understanding of the past should be established first. Properly dealing with territorial issues such as the Dok-do island problem in the「History of East Asia」class should ultimately facilitate the task of educating students of past clashes over territories, as well as the history of the past itself. And textbooks containing such attitude would contribute to the Korean students developing their own historical perspective to view the history of East Asia, and the establishment of a new era of cooperation as well, an objective that should be set for the The 「History of East Asia」class.