Comparison Between South and North Korea in Mathematics Textbooks

남북한 수학 교과서의 비교 -북한의 고등중학교(중등반) 기하를 중심으로-

Half century has passed since Korean peninsula was divided into South and North Korea. Now a days, there are many differences of politics, economy, culture and education between South and North Korea. Especially mathematics education in which I am interested has a lot of changes and differences. This is proved true by defects' proof. For those reasons, I compared South Korea's education ideology, goal and system, and goals of mathematics education with North Korea's. I compared geometric(1-4 years, published by Pyong-yang Educational Book Publication Co. 1991) of mathematics texts(1-6 years) which are used in the secondary school with mathematics text of South Korea in contents and organization of them. As a result of this comparison, education ideology and goal are distinctly different from those of South Korea because of the difference of pursuing humanity. In North Korea, the curriculum is very strict without autonomy. There are 1283 mathematics classes which are occupied 19% for six years during the secondary school. The contents are very similar, but there is a little difference in the definition of a term. The problems which praise Kim Il-sung and his son and reveal loyalty to them were found, and there were a lot of problems in order to promote hostile feeling against U.S.A and South Korea, too. In conclusion, mathematics education of Korean peninsula should be reunified in the fields of the terms and contents at first.