Activities

Each topic begins with a short introduction, and offers links to an initial gallery of images and texts relating to that theme. There are structured activities based on a small number of sources for each theme.

A different approach is used for each theme. In this way it is hoped that the user of the site will be encouraged to think about sources in different ways. They will consider a variety of aspects of the Korean War, and will engage with key historical concepts, knowledge and their own understanding and interpretation of the materials presented.

Teachers will note that most of the sources are propaganda materials and might want to gently lead students to understand that the materials are heavily biased. It is also important to stress that using biased sources is still valid. Provided that we know the origin and provenance of a source we will be able to check its accuracy and reliability, and can develop strategies to use the material that it contains to support our analysis and final synthesis of the historical issues.

What activities are available?

Reference
There are no tasks in this section. It is designed to set the scene and includes maps, a timeline and biographies of key individuals, as well as links to the site Glossary.

Topic 1. Society and Culture Activity:
Ten true or false questions about Korea.

Topic 2. The War Activity 1.
A task based on observation and reporting (description) skills, and based on the nature of the war.
Activity 2. Questions focused on what constitutes legitimate behaviour during conflict and warfare.

Activity 3. A series of images are presented followed by a task that opens the questions as to what constitutes a war crime.

Activities 2 and 3 offer potential to link to the Citizenship curriculum and to the discussion of ethics.

Topic 3. Women in the Korean War Activity:
A task that examines the role of women in Korea, and their part in the Korean War.

Teachers might like to raise with students how secure they feel their findings and observations are, and might want to discuss the need to make only provisional judgements if evidence is limited.

Topic 4. Evidence Case Study: Using cartoons
Activity 1. Based on a single visual source this task looks at the imagery used in a propaganda cartoon, and leads the student through decoding and understanding the cartoon.

There is potential here to link this task to visual literacy and the understanding of complex visual media. This offers links to Art and Citizenship.

Activity 2. Text sources are presented here, with a visual source in Activity 3. Both tasks allow students to engage with the sources and evaluate them in a structured way. Skills of critical awareness and observation, and supported reasoning/explanation are developed in responding to the tasks.

Activity 4.This exercise uses a text source from the war to look at how presentation and style can shape the nature of sources. Readers have to decide on a title for the article, which allows for the consideration of emotive language, presentation of accounts and subjectivity/objectivity.

Topic 5. Propaganda
Activity 1. This task is based on the use of historical terms and concepts and introduces the concept of value, bias and reliability when manipulating and using primary sources.

Activity 2. Uses a cartoon source, and offers clues and a writing frame to support students in responding to the task, which is centred on visual literacy and propaganda messages.

Activity 3. This task is focused on the issue of what historians mean if they say that one source 'supports' another. Readers are asked to consider a textual and visual source and to decide if the sources support each other.

Teachers could support and extend this exercise by discussing what 'refuting' and 'disproving' mean with their students, and how an historian might want to look at a range of sources before reaching a conclusion, but in reality might only be able to look at a very limited range of evidence because of the fragmentary nature of evidence.

Activity 4. This task uses a Korean poem, probably written to boost morale and as a propaganda weapon, to look at the fact that many different types of item constitute historical sources. A cloze exercise requiring analysis and comprehension of the text forms part of this task.

Topic 6. Prisoners of War
Activity 1. Looks at the issue of motive, and the reason why some sources might have been created.

Activity 2. Offers the chance to look at the concept of emotive and subjective language, as opposed to objective language.

Activity 3. This task is based on the concepts of similarity and difference.

In both tasks in this section teachers can make the point that critical awareness is an important historical skill. Many young historians mistakenly believe that primary evidence is better than secondary evidence because they think that 'being close to the event, or being there gives access to facts and guarantees accuracy.' These sorts of arguments ignore the nature of bias, subjectivity and error. It is also often the case that the supporting argument that 'photographs show what happened' can be used with this argument, when it is clear from many of the sources on this site that photographs are often posed.

Topic 7. The Peace Process
Activity 1. This task requires structured responses based on understanding and reporting on the contents of a source.

Activity 2. This activity is focused on understanding and working with biased sources.

Activity 3. The final task is centred on structured reasoning and supported explanation.