OSAKA--A Korean international school offering a curriculum based neither on race nor nationality that will encourage its students to take active roles in Asia will be set up in Ibaraki, Osaka Prefecture, in April.
The school was planned by a group of mainly ethnic Korean residents and its curriculum will include Korean-, Japanese- and English-language classes and history classes that are not biased toward North Korea or South Korea.
The number of ethnic Koreans naturalized in Japan is increasing. Only 10 percent of children in the ethnic Korean community attend schools that are specifically North Korean or South Korean, while most of the others go to Japanese schools.
A group of second- and third-generation ethnic Koreans set up a preparatory committee to establish a school where they could educate their children regardless of their nationality. Among the about 120 people who support the school is Kang Sang Jung, a professor of Tokyo University's graduate school.
A nonprofit organization will take charge of the clerical management and construction of the school in the Toyokawa district of the city. An educational corporation will be set up after the school opens.
The school will provide a six-year program of unified education for middle and high schools, with 70 students per grade. The students will have 39 hours of course work a week conducted mainly in Korean, and learn English for two hours a day from instructors dispatched by a major language school.
The school will create an original history textbook from an ethnic Korean point of view to teach the modern history of the Korean Peninsula.
Kim Si Jong, 78, a poet who will serve as the school's director, said, "Changes among ethnic Koreans have made us reconsider the meaning and prospects of living in Japan as well as how we live in northeast Asia."
(Jun. 10, 2007)
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20070610TDY03001.htm
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