Nature has a disturbing article about creationism in South Korea. Creationists have successfully pushed for the removal of many important scientific findings from school textbooks, including mention of Archaeopteryx and the evolution of horses:
A petition to remove references to evolution from high-school textbooks claimed victory last month after the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (MEST) revealed that many of the publishers would produce revised editions that exclude examples of the evolution of the horse or of avian ancestor Archaeopteryx. The move has alarmed biologists, who say that they were not consulted. “The ministry just sent the petition out to the publishing companies and let them judge,” says Dayk Jang, an evolutionary scientist at Seoul National University.
The campaign was led by the Society for Textbook Revise (STR), which aims to delete the “error” of evolution from textbooks to “correct” students’ views of the world, according to the society’s website. The society says that its members include professors of biology and high-school science teachers.
The STR is also campaigning to remove content about “the evolution of humans” and “the adaptation of finch beaks based on habitat and mode of sustenance”, a reference to one of the most famous observations in Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. To back its campaign, the group highlights recent discoveries that Archaeopteryx is one of many feathered dinosaurs, and not necessarily an ancestor of all birds2. Exploiting such debates over the lineage of species “is a typical strategy of creation scientists to attack the teaching of evolution itself”, says Joonghwan Jeon, an evolutionary psychologist at Kyung Hee University in Yongin.
The STR is an independent offshoot of the Korea Association for Creation Research (KACR), according to KACR spokesman Jungyeol Han. Thanks in part to the KACR’s efforts, creation science — which seeks to provide evidence in support of the creation myth described in the Book of Genesis — has had a growing influence in South Korea, although the STR itself has distanced itself from such doctrines. In early 2008, the KACR scored a hit with a successful exhibition at Seoul Land, one of the country’s leading amusement parks. According to the group, the exhibition attracted more than 116,000 visitors in three months, and the park is now in talks to create a year-long exhibition.
Even the nation’s leading science institute — the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology — has a creation science display on campus. “The exhibition was set up by scientists who believed in creation science back in 1993,” says Gab-duk Jang, a pastor of the campus church. The institute also has a thriving Research Association for Creation Science, run by professors and students, he adds.
That’s depressing.
20 comments
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Raging Bee
June 8, 2012 at 10:02 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Ed: Is there any evidence of involvement by the Unification Church or any of its front groups?
Michael Heath
June 8, 2012 at 10:07 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
What’s the demographic of people supporting creationism in South Korea? Are they predominately Christians or a combination of multiple religious groups?
timothyyoung
June 8, 2012 at 10:15 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
This kind of garbage makes me want to puke. What exactly did Henry Blake give his life for during the war?
frrolfe
June 8, 2012 at 10:19 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
unfortunately, evangelicals are the fastest growing “belief” group in S. Korea, thanks mainly to US “missionaries”. collateral damage from the war?
Scott F
June 8, 2012 at 10:36 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Let me guess. It isn’t “thriving” in the sense of actually doing “Research”, but “thriving” in the sense of “public relations”.
IslandBrewer
June 8, 2012 at 10:38 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
South Korea, yes, thanks to mostly American missionaries, is heavily christian. And not just the old traditionalist English 19th century missionaries who also sometimes built schools and brought in farming equipment, but 1950s American Baptist and Methodist “Fahr’n'brimstone” missionaries, who would pass out bibles to starving children while chawin’ down on candy bars. Korean evangelicals superfucking extremely into Jebus.
wscott
June 8, 2012 at 10:39 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Having lived there for 3 years: yes evangelical Christianity is huge in the ROK, and growing fast, not to mention well-funded and politically connected. IIRC while Christianity is still a minority religion, it is much more common among the upper/ruling class. (cite needed) And yes, the large US military presence is a contributing factor, as is the high number of US soldiers marrying Korean spouses.
d cwilson
June 8, 2012 at 10:56 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Sadly, not just in South Korea. Evangelicals are winning converts in places like Brazil and parts of Africa. I guess that’s one way to erase the science education deficit in the U.S.: Sabotage every other country’s science education.
TGAP Dad
June 8, 2012 at 11:08 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
First “fan death” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_death) and now this? Oy!
reverendrodney
June 8, 2012 at 11:18 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
It would seem that science cannot be involved with creationism because science is a matter of observation, inquiry, theories, peer review, etc., while creationism offers no questions or doubts, therefore inquiry is unnecessary. There are no doubts and no questions. Creationism is therefore without science.
So what do those professors and students at the Research Association for Creation Science do, beyond read the bible and say: “Yes, that’s right, yes, that’s true.” All day every day.
If South Korea continues on this creationism spiral it may have a Dark Ages bleak as its neighbor to the north. For denying science leads to denying its benefits.
holytape
June 8, 2012 at 11:36 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Now if we can get these groups in to Japan, India and China. We’ll be okay. There’s no point in dragging our society back to the stone age, unless we can take everyone else with us.
raven
June 8, 2012 at 11:39 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
South Korea is about 30% xian.
Which brings up the question of why the other 70% are putting up with this.
The xians in Korea have a lot of influence in the government right now and the President is some sort of whacko xian religious fanatic.
raven
June 8, 2012 at 11:49 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
FWIW, most of the xians in Korea are American style fundie xians. They are also rather violent. Xians have been burning down Buddhist temples and destroying Buddhist shrines for a while now.
Seems like xianity and violence are joined at the hip. Anytime and anywhere is a good time for them to get violent. It’s been 2,000 years of this now.
wscott
June 8, 2012 at 11:52 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@ raven: You just answered your own question. The percentage of Christians among the rich & powerful is significantly higher, possibly even a majority. (Anecdote alert: I don’t know of any polling correlating wealth with religion in the ROK.)
raven
June 8, 2012 at 12:03 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Probably true. I haven’t looked it up. The current president is a whacko fundie xian of some sort.
But that shouldn’t matter that much. SK is a democracy and number of voters and votes matter. At least in theory.
Modusoperandi
June 8, 2012 at 12:19 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
You’d think they’d have given up on Christianity, particularly the fundamentalist/literalist/legalist variants, once they found out that Korea isn’t mentioned at all in the Bible. Not even a “beget”.
andrewlephong
June 8, 2012 at 3:04 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
That hasn’t been a deterrent for European and American Christians, many of whose nations aren’t mentioned either.
Doug Little
June 8, 2012 at 3:46 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Well if they keep listening to the Xians instead of scientists they can look forward to conditions similar to their northern neighbor.
drizzt
June 9, 2012 at 4:44 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“Over the course of the last decade a fairly large number of Buddhist temples in South Korea have been destroyed or damaged by fire by misguided Protestant fundamentalists.” The misguided part is the one we should think of… Ordinary fundamentalists would what ? Just threaten to put things on fire ? They follow their stupid rulesbook when it suits them, forget it exists when it doesn’t… How convenient…
davidcortesi
July 7, 2012 at 6:51 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
This story it turns out, is considerably overblown. For a more complete picture, see this helpful blog post: http://askakorean.blogspot.com/2012/07/no-evolution-in-korea.html.