Busan Union Hits Back Over APEC Teaching Kit Busan Teachers Union Pillories APEC Forum Teachers' Union Puts Faith in N.Korean History Book Prosecutors Investigate Teachers' Union Booklet Teachers' Union Directed by a Handful of Ideologues Teachers' Union Headed Over the Cliff Teachers' Union Declares War on Chosun Ilbo Union Teacher Took Charges to Communist Nostalgia Bash Little Partisans in South Korean Schools

The Busan KTU on Wednesday offered to delete parts of a video that lampoons presidents Roh Moo-hyun and George W. Bush but defended the overall package, which criticizes the summit from an anti-globalization perspective.

The ministry in turn defended its decision Tuesday to turn the materials over to the Information Communication Ethics Committee for review, saying it wanted to know whether there were grounds for banning them. The committee said there were none since the materials were “not so excessively derogatory as to threaten social order, although they could minimally dampen international ties.”

But the ministry said Thursday even if the material did not transgress the bounds of freedom of expression, it violated the neutrality of education stipulated in law and was inappropriate for students too young to form their own value judgments.

Also on Thursday, an anti-APEC coalition of over 50 civic groups including the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions came to the aid of the KTU, urging the main opposition Grand National Party (GNP) to stop attacking the KTU and the materials. “It is wrong to slander the teachers’ union as threatening education by spreading views opposing APEC,” the coalition said in a press conference. The GNP should stop being unreasonable, it added.

(englishnews@chosun.com )