My name is Daniel. I was an English teacher in Seoul, South Korea, and now I am a writer who has

published three books including South Korea: Our Story by Daniel Nardini.

                   When I speak of school text books not telling the truth about history, nor the truth about its relationship with South Korea, I am talking about the Chinese text book controversy and not the Japanese ones. Having

been to China myself, and actually having visited a high school in Shanghai, I learned that Chinese text books tell a whole lot of lies. One lie is the myth that China was largely responsible for defeating Japan and not the United States or its allies. Another lie is that the Chinese Communist Party fought and beat the Japanese. Most of the fighting against the Japanese was done by the Chinese Nationalists. Still another lie is the Chinese

entering the war on the side of North Korea to fight against "U.S. imperialism" trying to take over the whole

Korean peninsula. It is never mentioned that North Korea attacked South Korea and that had China never

attacked the United States and South Korea that the whole Korean peninsula would be a unified democratic

country. It was because of China's action in the Korean War that the Korean peninsula is still divided, and that North Korea still exists and threatens the peace of East Asia. Chinese text books tell about the "liberation" of Tibet. Tell that one to the Tibetans! Tibet was an independent country before the Chinese Communists

invaded and conquered it. Then there was the Chinese invasion of Vietnam in 1979, and the Chinese

government's massacre of peaceful protesters in Beijing in 1989. These two things are not mentioned in

Chinese school text books at all (note: I was a witness to the Beijing Massacre, and for those who are

interested in knowing more about it, read my book The Day China Cried: A Witness to the June 4th

Massacre by Daniel Nardini). I am not justifying any lies or distortions in Japanese school text books, but for the number of sheer lies and distortion of history, the Chinese text books far exceed anything the Japanese ones do. Worse, China is a one party state where it does not want the people to even remotely know the

truth, and which wishes to control the minds of its young people especially. Because of this, China's

relationship with South Korea will always be in one sense or another a lie.