Korean officials join fray on book

Escalating a controversy that has simmered in Boston's suburbs, the region's South Korean Consulate has asked the state Department of Education to rethink its use of "So Far From the Bamboo Grove," an award-winning memoir of an 11-year-old Japanese girl fleeing Korea with her family at the end of World War II.

The book is part of the curriculum in a number of Massachusetts middle schools, but became a source of controversy last fall when a group of Dover-Sherborn parents, including Korean-Americans, objected to the book, calling it propaganda that glosses over brutality inflicted on Koreans by its Japanese occupiers.

Massachusetts schools are continuing to use the book, even as the controversy grows nationally and internationally. On Feb. 3, the reclusive North Korean government criticized the United States for allowing the book to be taught. In Hawaii, South Korean officials asked educators to reevaluate use of the book. And in South Korea, local news media have jumped on the story.

The South Korean Consulate wrote the state Department of Education on Jan. 16, but the letter is surfacing just as the book's author, Cape Cod resident Yoko Kawashima Watkins, prepares for a press conference today to defend herself against the complaints about her book.

In her letter, Youngsun Ji, consul general for the Republic of Korea, said the book gives "a false and distorted view of Korea as a country and of the Korean people." The local consulate, based in Newton, further complained that the book depicts Koreans as "evil predators" and asked the state to "seriously reevaluate the appropriateness of this book for reading at the middle school level."

The letter, addressed to Education Commissioner David Driscoll, also raises concerns about creating a "hostile environment" in classrooms for Korean-American students who could face discrimination because of the book.

Published in 1986, "So Far from the Bamboo Grove" is read in schools all over the area, including in Boston, Somerville, Wellesley, Belmont, and Franklin. It chronicles how Watkins, her mother and her sister fled from northern Korea to Japan in 1945, after the war ended and Japan was forced to give up its 35-year occupation of Korea. There are several references in the book to the Koreans and the Russians hunting for her family because her father was a Japanese government official.

"At a small stream I stopped to drink and I heard a cry. In the weeds was a Korean man on top of a girl. She was kicking wildly and screaming," the book says at one point.

In another passage, Watkins writes about her sister, Ko: "We had been in Seoul five weeks when one day Ko brought a warning. 'We must get out of Seoul. I saw several Korean men dragging girls to the thicket and I saw one man raping a young girl.' Ko was shivering. 'The girls were screaming for help in Japanese.' "

The state Department of Education is refusing to get involved in the controversy.

"This is a local issue decided by individual districts," said Nate Mackinnon, spokesman for the Education Department. "We don't tell districts what they can and cannot teach."

Watkins is one of 60 authors recommended by the department for grades 5 though 8.

Watkins, 73, said on Monday that whatever the state or local schools decide to do is up to them. "I don't ask them to put it on the curriculum," she said of her book.

Watkins, who describes herself as an antiwar activist, was at the Sherborn Peace Abbey on Monday to meet with a few Korean-Americans to hear some of their criticisms.

One of the Korean-Americans asked Watkins to change the introduction to the book so that the historical context is clear. Sunny Chong, president of the Korean-American Senior Citizens Association of Boston, told Watkins that she should add some context because now her book gives children a skewed version of Asian history.

"That's why we are so upset," said Chong.

Watkins said she didn't intend to avoid the history but was trying to focus on her story of survival. She said she always apologizes to Korean-American students when she visits schools for the wrongdoings of the Japanese forces. The book is classified as a "fictionalized autobiography" even though she refers to it as the true story of what happened to her.

In Hawaii, the state Department of Education decided the book would remain in schools but that teachers must tell students that its portrayal of history has been disputed, according to a report in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin last week.

On Feb. 3, the North Korean government joined the controversy by issuing a rare public statement, calling the book "an intolerable insult and mockery of the Korean nation, and an act of going against history and justice." The South Korean press has published several stories about the book in recent months, including a report that the Korean publisher halted sales of the book.

Locally, the controversy began last fall at the Dover-Sherborn Middle School, where about a dozen parents asked administrators to remove the book from the sixth-grade curriculum but leave it in the library. The most vocal critics are a handful of Korean-American parents who say they are offended that the book only briefly mentions that the Japanese were foreign occupiers of Korea and ignores brutalities inflicted on the populace for 35 years.

The book is "whitewashing history," said Sheila Jaung, one of the parents.

The book by Watkins has been taught at Dover-Sherborn for 13 years and is accompanied by an annual visit from the author. Last month, the School Committee decided to keep the book in the curriculum but to add more historical context, a decision that infuriated local Korean-American parents who wanted it moved to a higher grade level.

Scholars say that the Japanese military killed millions of people all over Asia before and during World War II. But in American culture and classrooms, there is little awareness of the magnitude of the brutality or the breadth of the atrocities.

Jaung and her husband, Henry, and another Korean-American parent, Agnes Ahn, have researched the book, looking for historical inaccuracies, and networked with other parents. They argue that the book would be more appropriate for older children and then only with historical context, which for them includes the war crimes wrought by the Japanese.

For the Dover-Sherborn parents, the book opens up a personal, painful exploration of culture and identity and what it means to be Korean-American. When Dover-Sherborn officials decided last month to keep the book, Jaung, who grew up in Seoul, stood up and declared -- her voice cracking -- that the ruling ignored her son and his rights. She said she was worried her son would be bullied because of the negative portrayals of Koreans in the book.

Lisa Kocian can be reached at lkocian@globe.com.