The division of the nation has provoked mutual distrust and misunderstanding over more than half the century, which is concurrent with a lot of interKorean conflicts. There may be more conflicts in the process of the unification of South and North Kor...
The division of the nation has provoked mutual distrust and misunderstanding over more than half the century, which is concurrent with a lot of interKorean conflicts. There may be more conflicts in the process of the unification of South and North Koreas and after that. In order to ensure the peace, unity and coexistence of the two countries, there should be a fundamental shift in school unification education. The purpose of this study was to apply conflict-resolving education to unification education in an attempt to foster the ability of students to iron out diverse kinds of conflicts and ensuing problems.
To serve the purpose, literature review was conducted to look for connections between unification education and conflict-resolving education, and the objectives, content and method of unification education to which conflict-resolving education would be applied were determined. Besides, a unification education program of that approach was developed. This study was implemented in the following procedure:
First, theories of unification education were investigated to build the foundation of educational philosophy for unification education, the content system of unification education and its methodology.
Second, an overview of conflict-resolving education was presented, and the necessity and significance of the application of that education were discussed to determine the validity of that approach.
Third, the objectives, content and method of unification education were devised by applying conflict-resolving education.
Specifically, the multi-dimensional introduction of conflict-resolving education was discussed to help improve the objectives of unification education. People who lead a separate life in separate culture are bound to misunderstand each other and suffer interpersonal conflicts. Therefore what sorts of conflicts there would take place in different fields including politics, economy, society, culture and education should be explored, and the objectives of unification education should focus on how to handle and remove the conflicts in a rational manner and how to coexist.
In which way conflict-resolving education should be modified to improve the content of unification education was explored. Unification education should center around sociocultural daily life to spark the interest of learners, and a variety of objective data on the diverse aspects of North Korean society should be supplied to teach students to make a critical yet sympathetic judgment. They should be taught to understand mutual differences and diversity, to get rid of conflicts resulting from the differences in a more constructive and creative way, and to create a peaceful co-living community. And they should be instructed to take a more receptive and tolerant attitude.
In order to bolster the method of unification education, a conflict- resolving program was developed. A wide variety of materials and teaching methods should be included in a conflict-resolving program to ignite learner interest and produce better educational effects, and that should be designed to be experiential and student-centered. A unification education program of conflict-resolving approach was presented in this study in consideration of all the above-mentioned conditions.
When unification education aims at boosting inter-Korean under- standing, creating a national community and post-unification co-living, students should learn how to tackle multiple sorts of problems and conflicts that may happen in the unification process and after that. They should be taught to be knowledgeable about unification and to be capable of eliminating conflicts in a rational and peaceful manner. The unification education to which conflict-resolving education is applied is expected to let students get a grip on the meaning of peaceful unification that both countries should pursue, and to boost their ability to properly respond to post-unification co-living society.