Abstract
Development of early modern history of Korea is tightly connected with foreign countries. Not only the Japanese, but Chinese, Russian and American influence played a great role in the formation of Korean national identity and later, the Korean states.
This historical narrative, however, went through modifications according to the ideological or political needs in both North and South Korea, beginning in the 1950s, when all the Korean history was being rewritten and it reflected in the education of national history for the first time after the liberation. As a part of my wider research on the impact of Great Powers on the events of Korean early modern history in high school history textbooks, I will present a case study on a single North Korean textbook from 1952 (Chosŏn inmin haebang t'ujaengsa (kyojae).
DPRK: Naegak chiksok chungang chidokanbu hakkyo) and for comparison a single South Korean textbook from 1964, which was however written in 1955 and published for the first time in 1957 (Yŏksa kyoyuk yŏn'guhoe. Kodŭngguksa, chŏnhangnyŏnyong.
Sŏul: Kyousa, 1964). I will qualitatively and quantitatively analyse the contents concerning the period between 1876 and 1945, with focus on the foreign influence on the main events of that time.
It will allow an insight into historiographical discourse aimed at the next generations during the 1950s, before the implementation of self-reliance policies in both countries, which greatly reinterpreted the national history.