The “East Asian History” Elective in Korean High Schools: An Attempt at Reflective Education in Transnational Space

Abstract

Since 2012, Korean high schools have been offering a completely new class, East Asian History. This new subject draws attention for its attempts to break the paradigm of current history education and pursue new methodologies and challenges to historical studies. What then is the reason why existing history education has come under challenge in Korea, and what are the outcomes? And what significance do those outcomes have beyond history education? This is the focus of this chapter. This chapter also treats the intention and objective as well as strategic objective of introducing this subject. I have focused my analysis on fundamental selection of contents and the examples used to illustrate the various historical events in East Asia. The narrative structure can be analyzed into five content organization principles as relativization, reconciliation, recognition, cooperation, and universality. And this chapter introduced some description cases and learning classes for these principles. Although there are yet many tasks to overcome to gain grounds in Korea, the attempt for a reflective history education in Korean high schools is opening a new era of transnational reconciliation and cooperation.