<2023.03.15>
Harvard Business School has corrected errors related to Korea in its core textbook Korea. This change came five months after the Voluntary Agency Network of Korea (VANK) submitted a correction request.
On the 15th, VANK stated, “It is a meaningful starting point that Harvard Business School recognized the seriousness of the distorted content about Korea and responded that they would review the correction. In February 2023, five months after receiving a reply to our protest letter, Harvard Business School published a revised edition of the textbook.”
In September of last year, VANK discovered multiple Korea-related errors in Korea, a textbook used at the prestigious Harvard Business School, and launched a global correction campaign.
VANK sent protest letters urging corrections to the two professors who authored the textbook, as well as to six parties including the Harvard Business School Publishing division. In October of the same year, Harvard Business School responded.
The revised edition changed the phrase “Japan unified Korea” to “Japan attempted to assimilate Korea through force.”
The description “During this period, Korea was industrialized, and transportation and infrastructure improved. Education, administration, and the economic system were also modernized” was changed to “Infrastructure improved during this period, but such developments were primarily for Japan’s benefit.”
After the sentence “Japan claimed that the comfort women issue was completely and finally resolved through the 1965 agreement,” the following was added: “Tensions over the resolution of the issue of Japanese military ‘comfort women’ continue in diplomatic and economic relations between Korea and Japan.”
In the “Country Overview” section of the textbook, the following was added: “Korea borders North Korea to the north, the Yellow Sea to the west, and the East Sea to the east.”
The map included in the textbook was also revised. In the original map, the East Sea was labeled as the Sea of Japan, and Dokdo was not marked at all. In the revised version, the East Sea is properly labeled and Dokdo is marked as “Dok.”
VANK stated, “We hope that this correction in Harvard’s textbook will not end here, but lead to further efforts to correct Korea-related errors in educational materials used in universities and academic institutions around the world.”