Only One School Abandoned 'Chaesikjuuija' (Vegetarian) Policy
The Gyeonggi Provincial Office of Education has strongly refuted the controversy that it designated Han Kang's representative work, The Vegetarian, as a "youth harmful sex education book" and recommended its disposal.
On the 11th, the Office of Education stated, "The claim that a 'list of youth harmful sex education books was created and disposed of in school libraries at all levels' is not true." It added, "The Office supports schools in autonomously and balanced management of books through the judgment of school library operation committees, which include parents."
According to the Office, a conservative parent group continuously filed complaints last year, claiming that some books in school libraries were harmful to students. In response, from September to November of the same year, the Office sent an official document containing the criteria for reviewing youth harmful media to education support offices, instructing schools at all levels to hold library operation committees involving parents and others to designate harmful books.
However, the official document included reports containing claims from the conservative parent group, and it is known that some schools referred to these when designating harmful books. As a result, about 2,490 schools judged a total of 2,517 books as youth harmful sex education books and disposed of them. This amounts to one book per school.
Writer Han Kang, selected as the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. [Image source=Yonhap News]
This accounts for 5.7% of the 44,903 sex education books involved in the harmfulness controversy. In particular, only one school was confirmed to have disposed of the novel The Vegetarian. It is reported that the school judged that some sexual content in The Vegetarian could have a negative impact on students. A representative of the Office of Education said, "The sex education books disposed of last year were autonomously determined by each school through operation committees," adding, "No specific book was forced."
Meanwhile, on the previous day (the 10th), the Swedish Academy selected novelist Han Kang as this year’s Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. The Academy stated, "Han Kang confronts historical trauma and invisible domination head-on in her works, revealing the fragility of human life," and "She possesses a unique perception of the connection between body and soul, the living and the dead, becoming an innovator of modern prose with her poetic and experimental style." This is the second time a Korean has won a Nobel Prize, following the late former President Kim Dae-jung, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2000.
Previously, Han Kang became the first Korean to win the Man Booker International Prize (now the International Booker Prize) in 2016 for her novel The Vegetarian.
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