The policy has become a bitter ideological battleground between left and right in South Korea, with critics accusing President Park Geun-Hye's administration of seeking to deliberately manipulate and distort the narrative of how the South Korean state was created.
Following an obligatory 20-day period to canvass public opinion, Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-Ahn and Education Minister Hwang Woo-Yea confirmed that middle and high school students would each receive a single government-issued history textbook from 2017.
"We cannot teach our children with biased history textbooks", Hwang said in a televised statement.
It was Park Chung-Hee who introduced state-issued textbooks in 1973 -- a system that survived the country's transition from military to democratic rule.
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In 2003, it was relaxed with the introduction of some privately published textbooks, which then became the norm from 2010 -- although they were still subject to state inspection.
Park's conservative administration argued that the books had taken on an increasingly liberal, left-wing bias, which some even labelled as "pro-North Korean".
Deeply sensitive issues like collaboration during Japan's 1910-45 colonial rule are also strongly contested, along with the violence that accompanied the move to democracy in the 1980s and 90s.
Hwang dismissed "groundless" concerns that state-issued textbooks would glorify the authoritarian, military rule of the past.
"This society is too mature to allow... Such an attempt to distort history", he said.
But a vocal coalition of liberal politicians, academics, students and civic groups disagree, and there have been large street demonstrations against the new policy.