Lawmaker Do’s poems to remain in textbooks

Poet-turned-lawmaker Do Jong-hwan’s works will continue to be published in textbooks after the National Election Commission (NEC) said Tuesday that including them in textbooks does not go against the election law.

The clarification came after the Korea Institute for Curriculum and Evaluation (KICE) asked the commission whether publishing a certain lawmaker’s works in textbooks violates regulations.

“We respect the commission’s interpretation, since it was made by an authoritative institution on the election law,” said an official at the institute.

The government-funded institute will soon have a textbook screening panel meeting to drop its earlier plan to recommend that publishers remove Do’s poems. Do is a lawmaker of the main opposition Democratic United Party (DUP).

KICE held a meeting to review middle school Korean language and literature textbooks regarding the lawmaker’s works last month.

Then it announced on June 26 that they recommended the removal of the legislator’s poems and essays from eight textbooks on the grounds that they should be politically neutral.

When this became known Monday, the move drew fire from not only Do but also the Korea Writers’ Association and other literary groups that claimed it was inappropriate to take a political stance on the works, written by the lawmaker before he entered politics. Moreover, Lee Si-young, chairman of the association pointed out that little action was taken regarding the publication of poems written by Kim Chun-soo, a ruling lawmaker in the Chun Doo-hwan government.

Do became a legislator under the proportional representative system during the April parliamentary elections. <The Korea Times/Kim Bo-eun>

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