Ministry of Foreign Affairs Pretends Not to Know... "South Korea is a Drug-Producing Country, Chinese Territory" Incorrect Foreign Textbooks

Board of Audit and Inspection Releases Audit Report on Overseas Missions
False Claims Such as "Korea Is Chinese Territory" Found in Foreign Textbooks
11 Overseas Missions Took No Action Despite Being Notified of Errors

Absurd claims such as "Korea is a drug amphetamine producer" and "Korea belongs to Chinese territory" have appeared in textbooks of other countries, and it has been revealed that overseas diplomatic missions were aware of this but neglected to take action. According to the audit results of overseas diplomatic missions disclosed by the Board of Audit and Inspection on the 15th, 11 overseas missions including those in the UK, Laos, and Hungary received notifications from the Academy of Korean Studies (AKS), an institution under the Ministry of Education, about errors in textbooks between 2021 and 2023 but did not request corrections from the respective countries' ministries of education or the publishers of the textbooks.

Yonhap News

Since the Ministry of Foreign Affairs signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Ministry of Education in 2014, the AKS has annually communicated errors related to Korea in foreign textbooks to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and overseas diplomatic missions. However, the overseas missions effectively ignored these notifications. The Board of Audit and Inspection reportedly notified the Minister of Foreign Affairs to "regularly check to ensure that internal government collaboration activities to correct errors are properly carried out."

In fact, a UK textbook contained false statements such as "Korea is a drug manufacturing country (amphetamine producer)," "Korea is a country in Southeast Asia," and "In the 4th century, Japanese troops invaded southern Korea, subjugated Gaya and its surroundings, and established a colony in Imna." Despite receiving requests from the AKS three times between 2021 and 2023 to demand corrections, the Embassy of the Republic of Korea in the UK took no action.

A textbook in Laos included incorrect content such as "The Russian Empire occupied Korea from 1864 to 1875" and "63% of South Korea's population are farmers living in rural areas." A Hungarian textbook referred to the Korean Peninsula as the "Genghis Khan Empire" and labeled it as "Chinese territory during the Han Empire era." However, the local embassy did not respond to the AKS's correction requests and took no measures.

Additionally, it was confirmed that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs allocated personnel without accurately considering the visa screening workload at each diplomatic mission. The audit revealed that as of 2023, the number of visa screenings per person per day at overseas missions varied greatly, ranging from a minimum of 0.52 cases to a maximum of 517.45 cases. In Indonesia, 121,600 people applied for Korean entry visas, but only one staff member was responsible for visa screening. Similarly, at the Consulate General in Ho Chi Minh City, which oversees southwestern Vietnam, 100,919 visa applications were submitted, but visa screening was effectively handled by just one person.

There was also a case where a foreigner applied for a domestic stay visa claiming to have received an invitation letter from a closed Korean company, and the embassy issued the visa without suspecting illegal stay. The Embassy of Mongolia issued visas to eight foreigners who submitted inappropriate documents from September 2022 to October 2023. These eight individuals were still illegally staying in Korea as of February last year, during the audit period. However, after the audit, the Ministry of Justice reportedly improved the system so that overseas missions must verify the business registration status of inviting companies before issuing visas.