At some point historical facts are disputed. If people who are living in the same generation forget their 'shared memory', the history which must continue to their descendant can turn nasty.

'History of ignorance' may be a result of this nasty change's process. The history remains by keeping the 'shared memory', education and historical records.

During a television program, Korean idols (from AOA group: Sul Hyun and Ji Min) accepted an historical question, but they didn't know the man in the picture even though it was was the Korean independence fighter Ahn Jung Geun. They even answered, "Ginttokkang?" (*Ginttokkang: the Japanese name for Kim Du Hwan.)

Public opinion regarding this was very acerbic. The idols looked quite scared and worried. After the torrent of abuse, they publically said they were sorry. The idols’ ignorance of history stemmed from general ignorance of history seen in teenagers.

A survey for teenager awareness of history was soon started, and naturally this ignorance has gathered a lot of media attention. This is neither new nor surprising.

To add to this, Tiffany (a member of Girls' Generation Group) used the japan ‘rising sun’ flag symbol on her picture. The problem was that Japan's rising sun flag is a symbol of the Imperial Japanese Army. After these issues almost everyone noticed the teenager ignorance problem.

It is important that we know how this teenager ignorance has appeared. We were able to find a clue in high school history class changes. History education time was up and down with changes in the educational system.

History is a required subject, so we had to take this class for up to 102 hours until 2001. From 2001 until 2010 we then had to take this class for up to 68 hours to lessen study time. Finally, after 2011 History classes were changed from a choice required subject to an elective subject..

Many people raised their voice against this decision, and the following year History was changed back to a being required subject once again. Although it was changed back to beinga required subject, students did not care about history substantially.

This is because the Korean Scholastic Aptitude Test doesn’t care about history. For ten years History was just an elective subject. Due to this situation, it was not too hard to say that Korean, Engilsh, and Math are most important for our education. Therefore it is the education system that made our students often ignore history classes.

There are many students who compare the Yasukuni 'shinsa'(神社) to ‘Gentleman’(紳士). Likewise, there are some surveys that show about half of Korean teenagers didn't know about the Korean independence fighter Ahn Jung Geun.

Not to support the teens, but it is more important to look at who has created the teens’ ignorance of history.

This year, elementary society textbooks have not included the phrase, 'military sexual slavery'. They just say that there were many poor women who were held against their will and suffered from the Japanese.

After these elementary students grow up to be teens, maybe they won’t know what 'military sexual slavery' means. At that point in time our society could be scolded about the students’ ignorance regarding history.

We must think who the phrase in the textbooks has been removed . Finally the problem can be seen as the same adults who destroyed the shared memory.

L.L.F Reporter Hye-jin Jeoung