Korean Teachers’ Union Gets Some Competition

You may recall how the KTU recently made itself  famous in the Korea blogosphere: its “What a Wonderful World” video for the APEC Summit.  This led, in part,  to an acrimonious controversy over education reform and a silly GNP boycott  of the National Assembly.  On a somwhat more productive front, tt also led to the formation of an upstart rival:

The Korean Liberal Teachers Union, established last month by teachers opposed to the educational direction of the left-leaning workers union, attempted to have a meeting yesterday with its counterpart, but the workers union refused to take part.

The workers union had earlier alleged that the new union was being secretly controlled by the Grand National Party.

The new union yesterday filed a defamation charge against the workers union.

A few paragraphs down, we see what  fine role models the KTU  members are for  the nation’s youth:

One report claims that at a high school in Gyeonggi province, students were encouraged by workers union members to damage vehicles belonging to teachers who opposed the union.

Cho Jing-hyeong, parent of a student, is expected to give examples of remarks by teachers of the union gathered over the years, which he thinks are inappropriate.

The remarks include speeches made by workers union teachers that Korea would have been unified if not for actions of the United States during the Korean War.

Other remarks reportedly made by teachers include saying that smart families read the Hankyoreh “• a left leaning daily newspaper.

It’s somewhat unclear where the KTU’s madness ends and the anti-KTU witch-hunting begins, but it does suggest a need for the government to impose some disciplined ideological neutrality here.  Why the GNP boycotts the Assembly  instead of  simply campaigning on this issue is beyond me.

If there’s a bright side, it’s that our own debates over  school curricula seem prissy by comparison.  The evolution of modern Korean education might well put the entire intelligent design debate to rest.