(Suwon = Yonhap News) Reporter Lee Young-joo = In a lecture held at the Gyeonggi Provincial Office of Education on the 28th, Hwang Hyeon-pil, director of the Institute for History Correction, refuted the bias controversy raised against him, saying, "I have never once heard from the history community that my lectures were wrong or that there were errors."
Director Hwang appeared as a lecturer at the '2026 Gyeonggi Education Great Transformation Celebrity Invitation Lecture' held at the main auditorium on the 5th floor of the Provincial Office of Education at 3:20 pm on this day and said, "When I lectured on history intensely for 7 years, I was praised by a variety of voices, including from the history community, but I have never heard that I lectured incorrectly."
He criticized those who raised suspicions of distorting history, saying, "Those who disparage independence activists during the Japanese colonial period and defend pro-Japanese groups, those who plot division, oppose unification, follow dictatorship and massacre, and disparage the May 18 Gwangju Democratization Movement dare to tell me that they are distorting history."
He added, "They framed Assassins as a 'distorted movie' and it worked, so they called me a 'distorted lecturer'. Because of those forces, I was able to feel the heart of an independence activist while lecturing on history. I feel an ambiguous gratitude to them."
In his lecture that day, Director Hwang gave an hour-long lecture on the history of the anti-Japanese armed struggle under the theme of ‘making history befitting history and education befitting education.’
Immediately after Director Hwang took the podium, a woman came into the lecture hall and caused an uproar, yelling, “Stop the lecture. What is the Gyeonggi Provincial Office of Education doing?”, but Director Hwang continued the lecture.
A Q&A session was held immediately after the lecture, but no special questions were asked. The event ended around 4:30 p.m.
About 500 people, including parents and faculty, applied in advance for the lecture, but about 300 people actually attended.
Ahead of Director Hwang's lecture that day, controversy surrounding his view of history and calls for the lecture to be canceled continued.
In a past lecture, Director Hwang sparked controversy over bias by saying that "(June 25) was a war caused by the United States," and he explained it through his YouTube account as "'the devil's editing' that cut out the post-war context."
The Korean Federation of Teachers' Associations and the People Power Party of the Gyeonggi Provincial Council demanded the cancellation of the lecture, and the National Federation of Parents' Organizations, a conservative parents' group, held a press conference in front of the provincial office of education on this day to disclose the process of selecting the lecturer and the verification process and urged Superintendent Ahn Min-seok to apologize and resign.
Minister of Education Choi Kyo-jin also said at the National Assembly Education Committee's comprehensive audit of government affairs on the 23rd that he would recommend Superintendent Ahn to replace the instructor, saying, "I think it would be right to reconsider" the invitation to Director Hwang.
On the other hand, some history teachers, including the Gyeonggi-do Elementary History Education Research Association and the Gyeonggi-do Secondary History Education Research Association, criticized the political circles, saying that history education should not be used as a political tool.
The Provincial Office of Education proceeded with the lecture on this day as scheduled, considering that the lecture topic was unrelated to the bias controversy.
Director Hwang accompanied Superintendent Ahn on a historical tour of Manchuria and Maritime Province with teachers to celebrate Liberation Day from August 11 to 15 of this year and gave a history lecture.
