Analysis of the Current Secondary History Textbook Descriptions of Women’s History in the Joseon Dynasty Based on the 2015 Revised National Curriculum

This paper presents an analysis of content in the descriptions of women’s history throughout Joseon in 16 Korean History textbooks for secondary school under the Revised Curriculum of 2015. The Korean History textbooks under the Revised Curriculum of 2015 are characterized by an emphasis on premodern history in the middle school textbooks and the increased proportion of modern and present history to 3/4 in the high school textbooks. As a result, the former had the descriptions of women appear first in the history of Joseon, whereas the latter saw a considerable reduction of women’s descriptions. Reflecting the new curriculum, the middle school textbooks focused on family-related content just like the old high school textbooks but presented a new viewpoint at a detailed level. They, for instance, stated a fact that second sons and sons younger than them were also discriminated in the inheritance of property, described by the latest research findings that women found their identity as a daughter-in-law with their weaker right as a daughter in some cases during the latter part of Joseon, and recorded that women enjoyed an active literacy life with Hangul by introducing Eumsikdimibang by Jang Gye-hyang for the first time. These textbooks, however, still omitted women’s roles in the fields of labor and economy and introduced no female characters. The content of a textbook is not the sole responsibility of its writer. The Ministry of Education should add a “gender” provision to its guidelines of textbook compilation to increase the percentage of women’s history in Korean History textbooks.