Teachers feel police stepped over the line with pro-U.S. comic

August 23, 2009 by Infowars Ireland

By Ashley Rowland and Hwang Hae-rym
www.stripes.com

SEOUL — South Korean police plan to distribute a comic book this fall aimed at changing the minds of elementary and middle school students who admire North Korean leader Kim Jong Il and want the U.S. military to leave their country.

The move is condemned by a leading teachers union as a return to the country’s dictatorship past.

“The police must not be a political organization,” said Eom Min-yong, a spokesman for the Korea Teachers and Education Workers Union, who claims police are misusing their authority to gain favor with President Lee Myung-bak. The union represents about 18 percent of South Korea’s teachers.

The 52-page book will say that North Korea’s nuclear program and possible reunification under Kim’s communist regime threaten the South, Korean National Police spokesman Kim Ki-tai said.

KNP decided to publish the book after observing a “shocking” trend of anti-Americanism among young bloggers, he said. The police randomly monitor blog sites, paying special attention to those that are considered a threat to national security.

“It aims to straighten out the distorted ideas about reunification and national security among young teenagers,” Kim Ki-tai said, adding that none of the students who wrote the blogs have been arrested.

About 150,000 copies of the booklet, targeting students in grades four through nine, will be distributed to classrooms across the country. The project will cost 75 million won, or about $60,000, and the money will come from the police budget.

Statistics showing that South Korean youth know little about their country’s relationships with the North and the United States also persuaded KNP to publish the comic book.

One survey, conducted by the Ministry of Public Administration and Security, found that less than 49 percent of middle and high school students knew that North Korea invaded South Korea. Only 43 percent could name the year the war began (1950), and 64 percent said the likelihood of North Korea invading the South was low.

Kim Ki-tai said North Korea’s recent missile launches and nuclear test alarmed expats more than South Koreans. Many South Koreans blame the U.S. for preventing reunification between the two Koreas, he said.
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