The Chosun Ilbo followed up a previous piece (which I dealt with here) on the nefarious schemes of Chinese academics to steal Koguryo history with an editorial on the subject today. I’ll reprint it in full (and highlight my favorite parts) below:
Something is up when there’s a move in China to make Goguryeo part of Chinese history. Since February of 2002, it has been pursuing something called Don Buk Gong Jeong, “Northeast Progress,” a state-funded effort to place the history of Goguryeo under the history of China with a five-year budget worth the equivalent of W3 trillion. In June of this year, the Guangming Ribao, a daily scholarly publication of the Chinese Communist Party, claimed that “Goguryeo is part of China.”
UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee is set to meet in Suzhou, China, in June 2004. On the agenda will be the reconsideration of North Korea’s application to register Goguryeo wall murals in Pyeongyang as UNESCO World Heritage, something that was once tabled because of Chinese obstructionist tactics, and to consider an application for Goguryeo wall murals located in Chinese territory. If North Korea’s application is again left unaccepted and only China’s site receives this recognition, then we might have an absurd situation in which Goguryeo becomes officially recognized as part of Chinese history.
Political calculations have to be involved in one way or another when China invests such an astronomical amount of funds for a state project about an historical issue. One can deduce that this is part of a highly advanced strategy, that it wants to reassert its claims over its Northeastern region, where ethnic Koreans reside, and, based on this, it wants to be able to take a swipe the historical justification for reaching into the area that is North Korea. The Guangming Ribao is taking the wild step of giving up on the claim that history in Pyeongyang was Chinese up to the point the capital was established there, and claiming that Goguryeo history after Pyeongyang became the capital classifies as Chinese history as well. The Guangming Ribao’s demand from out of the blue, to “stop politicizing scholarly issues,” is exactly what we would like to say.
Meanwhile, our government is just watching this seizure of Goguryeo history by China, almost as if oblivious. We should put our specialists in this area together immediately to formulate a response, and, if necessary, work to establish a structure of active cooperation with North Korea to deal with the matter as well. We need to show this “Northeast Project” for what it is, and, if there are found to be problems with it, we need to be assertive as to what the problems are. And while there should on the one hand be systematic gathering and analysis of the results of China’s Goguryeo research efforts, there should also, over the long run, be a program to strengthen our own research in Goguryeo history, which has long been close to a vacuum.
I sympathize with China’s apparent need to “reassert (actually, reaffirm) its claims (which are not really “claims,” but established and internationally recognized sovereignty) over its Northeastern region” when you have individual Koreans spouting quasi-irredentist claims to large swaths of Manchuria at a frequency that’s probably much too high for the maintenance of healthy bilateral relations. Still, these officially-backed claims over Koguryo are unsettling, mostly because I personally trust the Chinese only as far as I can throw them, but also because I’ve seen the way China has utilized its historical claims in the past. The knowledge that this country will share a sizable land border with China after unification (a land border that has historically served as the point of entry for many an uninvited guest) doesn’t help allay my concerns. Koreans need to squash the irredentist talk before it gets any louder (the only way they’d ever get their hands on Koguryo’s Manchurian territories is if China seriously went in the tank, an event that wouldn’t be in Korea’s interests anyway. And even then, they’d probably have to fight the Russians and/or Japanese for it), but at the same time aggressively confront Chinese attempts to establish historical “grounds” for later claims on Korean territory. Heck, perhaps the Chosun is right - the North Koreans are always good for hypernationalist rhetoric, so getting Pyongyang to take “interest” in the activities of Chinese scholars might not be such a bad idea.
All I care to say is that the Chinese can have Koguryo when they pry the bowl of boshint’ang (dog meat soup) from my cold, dead fingers.
(Hat tip to the Oranckay, who has more (and better informed) commentary on this over at his blog)
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6 Comments
Thanks for posting this article. I’m working with a couple of Korean professors on a research project about the “Problematics of Korean Unification.” (I’m not entirely clear on the difference between “problems” and “problematics.” but the latter was my suggestion, so I’m stuck with it.)
How I got involved in this project is a bit of a complicated story since I don’t (yet) know Korean despite (or because of) being married to a Korean woman and having two small children fluent in Korean (and they do take advantage, yes). The short version is that I had used Samuel Huntington’s civilizational thesis in a talk on Al-Qaida and the clash of civilizations, and since the organizer of this unification project is fascinated by Huntington, he asked me to take part.
Anyway, we’re trying to figure out what civilization Korea belongs to. Originally, Huntington used the category “Confucian” and included Korea, which most Koreans would probably, if perhaps grudgingly, concede. That was in Huntington’s article in the early nineties. More recently, in his book, Huntington has altered the term to “Sinic Civilization” — which offers the tempting rendering of “Cynic Civilization” until one checks the preferred pronunciation. I doubt most Koreans would want to be included in a “Sinic” civilization.” So, where do they belong, civilizationally? Not Japanese Civilization. Certainly not Orthodox Civilization. Not quite Western Civilization.
I’d prefer the older terminology “Confucian Civilization,” which would surely include Korea (traditionally, or at least since the beginnings of the Chosun period). But in Huntington’s analysis, this would align them with China, which I think is misleading if we want to predict Korean-Chinese relations. This article on Chinese vs. Korean claims to Goguryo shows the limits of the usefulness of Huntington’s thesis. Nationalism, not civilizational identity, is going to explain much of what happens in Northeast Asia in the next twenty years — in my opinion.
The potential for conflict lies in these ’scholarly’ debates over places like Goguryo and Mt. Baekdu. Koreans will begin to recall that the most recent time that the border was altered was in 1962, when China and North Korea agreed to a redrawing of the line passing through Mt. Baekdu, with China gaining territory and afterwards having about 60 percent of the mountain. I recently spoke with an older Korean professor who had visited the Baekdu area and had noticed that most of the highest peaks belonged to China. This had made him fell “sad.”
After reunification, Koreans might start looking at this and feel more than sad since the mountain has such mythic significance for Korean origins. The current debate over Goguryo is a harbinger of things to come. Thanks again for the posted article. I’ve been looking for stuff like this.
Jeffery Hodges
I’ve been fascinated with Manchuria for quite some time - historically, it was quite the mosaic of ethnicities and has served as the meeting ground (and battle ground) for some of the world’s greatest civilizations. Topographically, it looks pretty cool, too, if you’ve ever been there. Strangely enough, there’s a Mongol-Manchu-Korean dictionary, compiled by some professor at Dongguk University, sitting in the Kyobo Bookstore with my name written all over it. Don’t attempt to buy it - I will track you down like a dog (and long-time readers know what I do with the dogs once I catch them).
An interesting thing about Mt. Paekdu (which I’ve been to the top of - the photos are in my picture gallery) - not only is it sacred to Koreans, but it’s the legendary birthplace of the Manchu people (or at least what has to be all 10 of them by now, if linguistics are anything to go by), as well. Strangely enough, there used to be a Lamanist hermitage sitting right next to the Lake of Heaven, too - I have a picture of it somewhere, taken by some Japanese photographer during the early colonial period.
One thing about Huntington - it’s been a while since I picked up “Clash of Civilizations,” but I seem to recall even Huntington admitting that for the immediate future, intracivilizational conflict was going to outpace intercivilization conflict. Certainly, as we stand now, most conflicts tend to be within a particular “civilization” rather than between them. Another thing - why the hell did Japan get its own civilization? I mean, if you’re going to throw China, Korea, and Vietnam into a Confucian Civilization, you might as well throw Japan in there as well. The only reason he did that, as far as I can tell, is because one of the biggest geopolitical cleavage line in East Asia is the Chinese-Japanese one, and that would hardly support his general thesis. And I might get beaten up for saying this, and I’ll admit I’m hardly an expert on China or Japan (or Korea, for that matter), but I’ve been to China, and I’ve been to Japan, and if you’re going to group [South] Korea in a group with one or the other, historical ties to the former aside, you have to put it with Japan. Try suggesting that one to the other professors
Seriously though, I think your conclusion is the proper one here - national, rather than civilizational, cleavages will be of far more importance in East Asia for the forseeable future.
Three trillion won (about $2.6 billion) buys a lot of scholars. That number seems pretty bogus to me, maybe by three orders of magnitude. Anyway, I’ve got images in my mind of steely-eyed Korean scholars boarding troopships, wives and kids crying at the dock waving goodbye, pushing off to do battle in Manchuria with extremely well-funded Chinese academics, the fate of their nation at stake.
Thanks for the reminder about Huntington’s concession to intracivilizational conflict. I should note this in the article that I’m writing.
The concession is an implicit admission that Huntington’s Civilizations “paradigm” to replace the Cold War paradigm is seriously flawed. What good is a Kuhnian paradigm for predicting conflict in the world if it cannot predict conflict in the world?
Where Huntington’s thesis works best is in predicting conflict between Islamic civilization and all others (but that has more to do with Islam’s division of the world into the realm of Islam and the realm of war than with civilizational conflict per se). His original article was really more about that — he borrowed the expression “clash of civilizations” from Islamic expert Bernard Lewis, after all.
Huntington got so much flak over that article (being accused of Islamophobia, Orientalism, and a host of other politically incorrect sins) that he felt impelled (I argue) to dress up his views on Islam’s “bloody borders” as a general theory of more-or-less bloody borders between all civilizations.
I also think that Japan belongs within what Huntington originally called Confucian Civilization if one is going to include Korea and Vietnam. I think he separated Japan partly for the reason that you give (the Chinese-Japanese geopolitical cleavage) but also because the Japanese see themselves as unique, and part of Huntington’s criteria for a civilizational identity is self-identification — i.e., with what civilization does a people consciously identify itself?
Jeffery Hodges
If Koguryo belonged to any nation that exists today, it certainly is NOT what is presently “China”. Taken from an article about the Kogurian military:
“The morale of the Koguryo soldiers was extremely high-this is certified by partisan units in the Chinese rear and the high pathos of soldiers during the battle, by people, who by their own will, left their homes when Uiji Mundok implemented his scorched earth policy.
The main point is that the men of Koguryo had already come to grips with their ethnic self-consciousness, understanding their non-Chinese tradition and culture. Quintessential of this was the cult of Chumong, the legendary founder of the Koguryo kingdom and ideal ruler and hero. The temple of Chumong is mentioned even in Chinese sources. After the wedding of the god with a specially selected bride, faith in the presence of the unseen Chumong so raised the morale of the defenders that the Chinese could take them only by completely destroying them. Both the paintings from the tombs and the legends that many Koreans have heard around the fires are different from the Chinese stories…
During the Three Kingdoms period, China fought the Okcho and Ye tribes with Koguryo, and later Malgal tribe and the Turks.
Koguryo people felt that they were the descendants of Old Choson-the first Korean kingdom, as they too bravely resisted the Chinese at the time of the Han dynasty…”
http://world.lib.ru/k/kim_o_i/ak9.shtml
this whole argument makes me laugh
as a student studying asian history(especially north-east), i can see that Mr Marmot is truly a lost lil whiteboy in big asian city.
well, first of all, if you hate that place so much and want to disgrace their history, you might as well go back to where you came from.
and my guess is, you’re an american, america..land of no history and people with latin and briton hybrid right?
anyway, martmot’s comment on highly educated rich chinese scholar makes me laugh..i’ve met many chinese studnets and they’re not certainly rich nor well educated, i’m sure you guys know that chinese universities have 2yr diplomas and so on for medicine and enginering etc..you expect those diplomas to compete with degrees??
and in china, you don’t study for a degree of diploma, you pay for it!
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TITLE: Capturing China: 2003-12-19
BLOG NAME: Winds of Change.NET
DEC 19/03 TOPICS INCL: PRC and Taiwan give-and-take; Chinese interaction with expat bloggers … The Information Revolution is coming to town … Economic indicators … Asian Weblog Awards … And your one-stop shopping for China-based blog commentary.