책 소개
Publishers’ Foreword Korea and Japan, Partners for the Future International interaction and, more particularly, cooperation with neighboring countries are essential to guarantee the prosperity of humanity and world peace, and to create a just and affluent world. For constructive international exchanges and cooperation, meanwhile, one needs to understand the shared past, in other words, the shared history, with our neighbors. This is because it is by looking back at the past and drawing on history that we can build the present and create the future. The importance of national history is well understood in every country. However, in order for countries to achieve mutual understanding, it is necessary to go beyond knowing just one’s own national past. Efforts to correctly understand the histories of other countries, and especially the histories of one’s neighbors, are particularly important in today’s ever-shrinking world, that which we call the global village. Korea and Japan have cooperated with each other throughout history, even since prehistoric times. Over the centuries, the two countries were at times partners with close ties of friendship, and at other times competed with each other. Some chapters of their shared history were rife with tension, and the two countries even waged war against each other. The shared history of Korea and Japan has been particularly bleak in the modern era. Their relationship as colonized and colonizer in the early twentieth century is a case in point. This unfortunate chapter of history between the two countries, even if influenced by a larger current of world history known as imperialism, cannot be dismissed or trivialized for this reason. Today, great changes lie ahead for South Korea and Japan, and both countries need to prepare for the future with wisdom and foresight. To be able to look to the future with confidence, they should be able to squarely face their pasts and come to terms with unresolved issues, and this, as soon as possible. A history that is removed from truth is a distorted history, and when what is misrepresented by such distortion is another country’s history, this constitutes cultural aggression against that country. A skewed perception of history, furthermore, is bound to create people stripped of the ability to judge fairly, people who ultimately are unable to correctly see themselves as they are. Such a deplorable state as the inability to honestly face the past should be avoided at all costs. In 1997, a group of South Korean and Japanese historians and educators came together in hopes of writing an accurate and honest historical narrative of the two countries’ shared past. We were united behind the objective of developing history textbooks that may be used in classrooms in both countries. In order to complete this book, we had to work hard and overcome numerous setbacks and hurdles. Without our strong belief in our cause and our sense of mission, this book could not have seen the light of day. This book, however, is far from perfect. It is not easy to satisfy all of the stakeholders and meet the expectations of academia, the educational community, and the general readership at the same time. Nevertheless, it is no small achievement, we believe, to be able to offer to students in South Korea and Japan a common textbook so that they may at last study the same history. Our hope is that this book will help South Korean and Japanese students form an accurate understanding of the history of the interactions between their countries. They may find some of what they will read in this book thought provoking, and often puzzling. Students will, in sum, understand what it is to have differences in historical perception. If this book can assist them in developing a historical awareness and a mature perception of history, it will open the way for qualitative improvements in increasing cultural exchanges between South Korea and Japan. By learning to honestly face the past and correct…
리뷰 남기기
로그인하면 리뷰를 남길 수 있어요.
리뷰 0개
아직 리뷰가 없어요.