Historians to Boycott Official Textbooks

Historians at major universities have warned they will boycott the government’s plan to reintroduce official history textbooks for middle and high schools by 2017.

A total of 109 professors at 10 universities this week vowed not to take part in the government's plans.

The Association for Korean Modern and Contemporary History and other groups have also announced that they want nothing to do with the Park Geun-hye administration's plan to reintroduce official history books.

Thirteen professors at Yonsei University first announced their boycott on Tuesday, followed by nine professors at Kyunghee University and 25 more academics at Korea University and Seoul Women's University on Wednesday. The following day, 29 more historians at Sungkyunkwan, Chungang, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies and University of Seoul joined the boycott.

All 24 history professors at Pusan National University also said they have a "responsibility as intellectuals to remain objective" and washed their hands of the plans.

The Ewha professors said the project is "undemocratic" and "against international practice."

Professors at Seoul National, Sogang and Hanyang universities are also considering a boycott. At SNU, 34 professors already sent a letter of protest to the government on Sept. 2, a day before the government announced the plans.

The conservative administration claims the current independently published textbooks are full of "leftwing" bias that can only be corrected by an official version.