Encouraging news from South Korea

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The plan to eliminate examples of evolution from textbooks in South Korea is under reconsideration. As NCSE previously reported, the South Korean Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology revealed in May 2012 that, due to a petition from a creationist-linked group, textbook publishers were preparing to eliminate the evolution of the horse and of Archaeopteryx from their high school biology textbooks. South Korean biologists complained that the decision was taken without consulting them, one telling Nature (June 5, 2012), "The ministry just sent the petition out to the publishing companies and let them judge."

Now, however, "[t]he South Korean government is poised to appoint a new committee that will revisit a controversial plan to drop two examples of evolutionary theory from high school textbooks," according to Science Insider (July 6, 2012), and about fifty prominent South Korean scientists are preparing to submit a petition to the government calling for the proposed changes to be rejected. "When these things are done, I think it will turn out that after all Korean science will not surrender to religion, so to speak," Jae Choe, an evolutionary biologist at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, told Science Insider.