Teaching Geography - Dokdo Inside

A Yonhap article* almost made me believe for a moment that the CNRS (Centre National de Recherche Scientifique), my country's most prestigious research center, had validated the facts that Japan distorts history and that Dokdo is Korean, but after reading the report the truth is more subtle.


1) About the document and its authors:

The article "Géographies scolaires à l’épreuve du Monde, éléments d’approche comparée des cas sud-coréen et français" ("School geography confronted to the World, elements of comparative approach to the South Korean and French cases") was published in december 2012 in ESO #34, the publication of ESO. Espaces et SOciétés - UMR 6590 is a Unite Mixte de Recherche (a research unit pooling university and CNRS ressources) that focuses on the spatial dimension of societies (coupling architecture, geography and urbanism with sociology, environmental psychology...) - typically seoulvillage-friendly subjects!

The article is signed by Saangkyun YI and Jean-Francois THEMINES for the ESO-Caen, the ESO branch at the Universite de Caen Basse-Normandie, where YI, a research Fellow at the Northeast Asian History Foundation, wrote the thesis that provides the elements for the South Korean case in the article: "Une discipline entre nation et empires : histoire de la géographie scolaire en Corée, 1876-2012" ("An academic discipline between nation and empires: history of school geography in Korea, 1876-2012"). Professor Jean-Francois THEMINES works at the Maison de la Recherche en Sciences Humaines (MRSH - Universite de Caen Basse-Normandie - CNRS), where he contributes to two programs: ESO-Caen and CERSE (Centre d'Etudes et de Recherche en Sciences de l'Education).

Interesting topic, interesting article, and interesting insights (eg the reasons behind the adoption of the US "social studies" system in Korea, or the parallel showing how the Prussian and Japanese models impacted teaching systems following the Franco-Prussian war / Treaty of Ganghwa humiliations of the 1870s). It also confirms how school geography and its iconography can echo evolutions in geopolitics, supranational / global entities or aspirations, the concept of nation...

Now about that Dokdo thing.


2) The truth about Dokdo:

First of all, the Northeast Asian History Foundation - Dokdo connection didn't come as a surprise: this organization aiming at peace in the region by "resolving historical conflicts" has from the start focused on this issue, and even organized essay contests about it. Each time you visit their website (historyfoundation.or.kr), you get this pop-up "10 truths about Dokdo - not known in Japan":

Saangkyun YI doesn't seem to hide his sympathy for the Dokdo cause in his own posts, and I respect that transparency**. I also think that mentioning Dokdo and the way it is treated in Korean geography textbooks is relevant for this article. The question is: is the article fair about the issue?

The answer seems to be positive.

If the words "Takeshima" or even "Liancourt" don't appear anywhere, the Dokdo islets seem properly presented ("considered as hers by South Korea" (...) "but Japan claims their sovereignty"). Note that they are "situated off the Eastern coast of the Korean peninsula", which conveniently skips the "East Sea - Sea of Japan" part of the equation, even if it doesn't leave a clue about the relative position of Japan.

Two sets of iconography are used for the South Korean case: a reproduction of a full page about Dokdo (the titles hammering the usual message "Dokdo is a Korean territory", subtitles are translated in red over the page)...

... and a less verbiose extract about Pyongyang (only images with descriptive titles - translations appear in the caption below):

Furthermore, Pyongyang is only mentioned once in the text compared to half a dozen times for Dokdo. Does it mean that the city is only used as an alibi for an article meant to push the Dokdo agenda? No: this is not an article about Dokdo, but Dokdo illustrates perfectly "a logic of state school iconography" (consistent with the not very "post-national" instructions from the Ministry of Education also quoted here***), compared to the more classic and positive presentation of Pyongyang.

Again, we don't have a full picture of the Pyongyang presentation to compare completely. And if  the South Korean state agenda is exposed, its content is somehow published and translated (along with non-state players, since VANK is also mentioned). We are explained that the discipline was prevented from emerging in Korea under Imperial Japan rule, but we don't see the actual propaganda except for this cover of a Japanese textbook imposed to Koreans in 1944...

schoolbook for 6 to 8th graders - vintage wartime Imperial Japan

But let's not start a hair-splitting contest by decrypting potentially asymetric iconographies in a study of the history of selective iconographies. I was simply showing how difficult it is to manipulate such sensitive topics, and here, the editorial line respects a scientific approach: this article certainly cannot be seen as a promotion of Korean interests, and it doesn't solve the Dokdo conflict either, because that's not the subject.

Where's the problem then?

That Korea was led to beef up its nationalist rethoric, that's a problem.

Revisionist textbooks in Japan, armies of pseudo historians and geographers in China rewriting history and redrawing maps, that's a bigger problem.

Terminating the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Korea, turning school history into a simple option, and allowing creationism in school****, that's not a small problem either.

Time to build a future based on a mutual respect and understanding of the past. Time for a Global Truth and Reconciliation Network*****.


Seoul Village 2013
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* "佛학술지에 독도논문.."일제가 지리 왜곡" (Yonhap News 20130320)
** you already know my position (see for instance "Claiming Dokdo as Takeshima equals claiming Seoul as Gyeongseong")
*** note that the case of Dokdo is not the only one: the Ministry also highlights the Kando region in today's China
**** see "State-condoned creationism in Korea? A cold-blooded murder against King Sejong"
***** see "We reject as false the choice between revisionism and nationalism - for a Global Truth and Reconciliation Network"

100 years of Koreans in Japan

My "Korea-Japan" Friday was supposed to be quieter, highlighted by this visit to the Seoul Museum of History on the inaugural day of the exhibition about Koreans in Japan, and the bronze medal game between both countries at the Olympics.

Then the news came that President Lee would make a surprise visit to Dokdo, spoiling the mood to say the least*.

But nothing could ruin the first bearable day following the meanest heatwave in decades**, and I enjoyed the stroll along Gyeonghuigung-gil, with a quick hello to my old neighbor, the Korea Football Association building, dressed as usual for the event...

... and at the other end of the street, the museum and its old-map-of-Seoul-slash-fountain in full swing.

What I didn't expect was the massive crowd inside. Turns out I arrived right on time for an inauguration I suspected would have happened in the morning. There goes the ribbon, with the help of Dr KANG Hong-bin, the brilliant director of this museum, KANG Duk-sang, the curator of Tokyo's "History Museum of Japanese Koreans" (재일한인역사자료관) and an ethnic Korean himself, and CHUNG Jae-jeong, President of the Northeast Asian History Foundation:

There are two parts in this exhibition: a focus on the daily lives of Koreans and ethnic Koreans in the archipelago, and KANG Duk-sang's collection of nishiki-e prints. At the same time glorifying imperialism and fueling racism towards Koreans, these colorful pictures contributed, at the end of the XIXth century, to the official propaganda that paved the way for the colonization of Korea by Japan. There are even card games and board games. Textbook propaganda... and we're not even talking about textbooks!

Except for the exotic touch of the prints, I notice many similarities with colonialist materials from the same period in Europe. But the "other" doesn't look that different on the pictures. You do see a cartoon of a crying Korean tiger, but in this collection at least, not the equivalent to the outrageous racist caricatures that persisted late into the XXth century (more or less intentionally, like with Herge's highly controversial "Tintin au Congo", for instance).

The thing is that, like all humans but even more so, Korean and Japanese people are brothers. And it's hard to justify racist propaganda within the family. So the authorities resorted to techniques very similar to WWII antisemitic propaganda, for example a police briefing about how to tell "Joseon" people from "authentic" Japanese people. But with very few physical details - the hair, maybe? And a lot of behavioral traits, like the Confucian marks of respect to an elder citizen. And if you read between the lines, the same jealousy and self-hatred leaking from the racist speech. At one point, police officers are warned they may be tempted to believe Koreans look noble because of the way they walk. And there's the poem of a Japanese citizen, who doesn't understand why a policeman asks him to repeat a silly sentence, until he realizes that's a way of spotting a Korean accent.

I can say "Japanese citizen" because even now, Koreans and ethnic Koreans cannot get the Japanese nationality. Either they keep the Korean nationality, or they drop it for a special status that turns them into apatride oddities. The exhibition tells the story of generations going through daily discriminations and humiliations, even when they want to embrace Japan as their only country. When a brilliant person was exceptionally proposed to take the Japanese nationality in order to become a judge, and even if he had always dreamt of becoming a judge and of being recognized in the Japanese society, he had to refuse because it meant the very negation of his ideal of justice.

A few ethnic Koreans do succeed every now and then, and the compulsory fingerprinting is just a bit less humiliating than it used to be. And of course, in spite of the sick ping pong game between Fareastern hatemongers, the 1923 madness is not likely to happen anytime soon (following an earthquake, racist rumors accused Koreans of adding to the destruction, leading to the mass murder of 6,000 innocent "Joseon" in broad daylight).

But fundamentally, nothing changes, racism remains institutionalized, and this exhibition cannot identify any glimmer of hope for the future of hundreds of thousands of Koreans in a home that refuses to embrace them... at the official level at least: little progress would have been made without the contribution of responsible Japanese citizens, and I was happy to see a significant proportion of Japanese people among the visitors.

As you browse through these sad testimonies and lists of avoidable tragedies, as you try to overcome negative emotions - extremism feeds upon that feeling of helpless anger -, you can't help but think about the way today's Korea is sometimes dealing with its own growing population of foreigners, particularly migrant workers. Will Korean media help the audience appreciate the mirror effect? 

Once again: yes, Japan must apologize, yes, Japan must change, but Korea cannot at the same time ask for change and refuse to face and fix its own failures.

Seoul Museum of History
"100 years of Koreans in Japan"
55 Saemunan-ro (Sinmun-ro-2-ga), Jongno-gu, Seoul 110.062
Tel: Dasan 120
Website: museum.seoul.kr
(ADDENDUM 20120814: I forgot to mention the projection of movies related to the exhibition - fiction and documentaries, check the website for the program. that's only between Aug. 11 and Aug. 17)


Seoul Village 2012
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** up to 3108 degrees Celsius, the temperature at which smartphones get dumbstruck: