고등학교 『국사』의 여순사건 서술 변천 과정

Abstract

This article examines how the description of the Yeosu·Suncheon incident (Yeo·Sun incident) had been changed in both government-produced and government-licensed high school textbooks. The Yeo·Sun incident was initiated when the 14th regiment, which was stationed in Yeosu, disobeyed the counterinsurgency command to be deployed to Jeju-do to put an end to the Third of April incident, otherwise known as the Jeju Massacre, and rose in revolt. In the quelling of this revolt, massacres of civilians were carried out, resulting in over 10 thousand deaths in the eastern Jeonnam area. But previously, the Korean government emphasized only the rebellious aspect of the Yeo·Sun incident, and applied this perspective when making Korean history textbooks. This article tries to understand how the perception of Korea—from the government’s perspective—has changed by looking at the changes in descriptions of the Yeo·Sun incident in Korean history textbooks. For this, Korean history textbooks are divided into three periods. The first is the second curriculum period, in which different publishers were first able to produce their own Korean history textbooks. The descriptions were different depending on the publishers, but all were examined by the government in order to be officially approved. In this second curriculum period, the Yeo·Sun incident first appeared, but only in half of the textbooks, and all were described from anti-communist stance; for instance, the textbooks claimed that North Korea dispatched communists to South Korea in order to communize it, and the Yeo·Sun incident occurred as part of this. The second is from the third to fifth curriculum periods, in which Korean history textbooks were unified into one government-designated textbook when more anti-communist positions started to be advocated by the military dictatorship. The third is from the sixth to seventh curriculum periods, in which only one type of governmental textbook continued to be available. But a momentous change was made in the description of the Yeo·Sun incident in that the description was changed from revolt to incident. This perception change was indebted to the efforts of local people and the accumulation of academic research.