Ministry of National Defense “Dokdo territorial dispute area’ technical military mental education textbook is due to poor prior review”

After four months, the Ministry of National Defense announced the results of an audit of military mental education textbooks that described Dokdo as a disputed territory.

As a result of the Ministry of National Defense’s audit, it was revealed that during the first consultation in May last year, a professor serving as an advisory committee member pointed out that “Dokdo is not a territorial dispute area and there is no need to say it is a disputed area.”

The Ministry of National Defense explains that despite these opinions, sufficient review was not conducted and it was included in the textbook without modification.

The Ministry of National Defense also stated that no issues were raised or reviewed regarding the absence of Dokdo notation on 11 maps of the Korean Peninsula in the textbook.

The Ministry of National Defense explained that this problem was not discovered due to the fact that the entire writing team consisted mainly of active-duty soldiers, the final version of the textbook was not properly reviewed, and opinions from related departments and external organizations were insufficiently collected.

At the same time, cautions or warnings were issued to four people in charge at the time of publication.

However, they stated that they did not include in the audit the content that was controversial, such as technology that praised former President Syngman Rhee and defined internal threat forces as our enemies, saying that the evaluation may vary depending on the perspective.