South Korea’s New Leader Abolishes State-Issued History Textbooks

 South Korea’s president, Moon Jae-in, on Friday ordered his government to abolish state-issued history textbooks for middle and high school students, his first move to erase the unpopular legacies of his impeached and ousted predecessor, Park Geun-hye.

Mr. Moon’s order was largely symbolic. The three history textbooks prepared by Ms. Park’s government have been so unpopular that only one of the country’s roughly 5,500 middle and high schools has adopted one of them. But even that school was temporarily barred from using the book after parents filed a lawsuit.

In 2015, Ms. Park, the daughter of the military dictator Park Chung-hee, announced that all middle and high schools would be required to abandon the privately published textbooks they used and adopt the new government-issued books beginning this year. She said the “left-leaning” private textbooks tainted the minds of young children.