Former Dongguk University professor Kang Jeong-koo, who was relieved of his position after he penned a column defining North Korea’s invasion of South Korea as a “war of unification,” has once again stirred shit up by defining China’s intervention in said war as a “defensive” operation. During a lecture sponsored by the Gyeonggi Citizens’ Coalition for Democratic Media on Monday, Kang said:
“China had been announcing repeated statements that it would intervene if the United States advanced north after the Incheon Landing… From China’s position, it intervened in the war based on the concept of ‘defending the home’ because a potential enemy had reached Pyongyang.”
Kang sure is an understanding fellow. Now, keep in mind, this is the same guy who stated that U.S. intervention in the Korean War prolonged the conflict and led to the deaths of millions. Of course, maybe he was just explaining the Chinese take on the war sans commentary. I can’t judge, as I haven’t read the entire lecture. But given how he wasn’t particularly shy about offering his opinion about the U.S. role in the war, I’m kind of surprised he didn’t add any acerbic condemnation of the Chinese involvement. Or I would have been surprised if I didn’t know better.
He also said during the lecture:
“One could also see the war as a war of unification, a war of ideology and a war of class liberation, depending on the identity, goals and points of view… But the so-called mainstream print newspapers like the Chosun, Joongang and Donga dailies, ignoring the diversity of democracy, have stressed only [the view] that the war was an illegal invasion by North Korea, and in the end, I became of victim of the ‘Korean War as a unification war’ incident.”
He was victimized of course—he lost his job, and he was sentenced to a three-year suspended sentence for doing nothing more than writing nonsense on the Internet, something that would have put me behind bars long ago. I’d feel a lot sorrier for him, however, if getting abused by the mainstream press, fired suspended and criminally convicted wasn’t the best thing that could have happened to the guy, as I explained when Kang first made the news.
UPDATE: Korea Times piece in English.
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Actually, Kang is half-right, and ethnic Koreans in China share his views. The Korean War was a civil war that drew foreign participants. North Korea’s invasion was no more illegal than the North’s invasion of the South in the US civil war, although the comparison ends there. Neither side had any obligation to respect the 38 parallel line arbitrarily drawn by the US and the Russians, and the main reason the US initally withdrew in 1949 was because Rhee and Kim had been rattling sabres at each other, and the US did not want to get involved in another conflict on the heels of WWII.
It is arguable how much China’s intervention was about defending its own turf against a possible US advance versus preventing the fall of the newly established allied Communist regime in the north. The Chinese outwardly claim that they sent troops because they were afraid that the US would not stop at the Yalu River. Below is a link to a long piece on the role of the former USSR and China in the Korean War, based on information culled from declassified Russian documents. Curiously, Kang says nothing about Stalin’s active role in starting and continuing the war as evidenced by the contents of Russia’s own archives.
http://www.alternativeinsight.com/Korean_War.html
The biggest problem with Kang and other leftists is that they refuse to acknowledge that fifty years later, the southern half of the peninsula is much better off in terms of quality of life than it would be if the US had stayed out of the conflict.
The Korean Times piece says he’s just suspended, rather than actually having been fired. However, I can’t imagine why a professor of sociology feels qualified to make silly statements about matters clearly outside of his field of research.
In any event, what exactly was criminal about his statements/actions?
–Remort
Sonagi wrote:
Actually, Kang is half-right, and ethnic Koreans in China share his views.
Aren’t people in China taught that South Korea and the US invaded North Korea (at least, that’s what I saw first hand in the 1990s). So, um, it would hardly be surprising that ethnic Koreans in China would share such views with someone who probably has also read a lot of Bruce Cumings works, which also blame the ROK and US for starting the war.
Yes, a lot of Chinese do think the Americans started it. The Chinese government does basically shut up about it now, but doesn’t correct the information that has been put out in the past. My wife’s (who is Han Chinese, the dominanct ethnic group in China) grandfather died in it, and it is unfortunate in a way that they do shut up about it. The Chinese oligarchy (and democracies too) would have a difficult time saying their involvement in the war was a mistake, but the soldiers themselves were honorable. Instead, they just ignore the war and the soldiers.
A few years ago, my company (a state-owned Chinese one) did visit South Korea as a company vacation. The tour guide did mention it once, and I know he was not flattering towards Americans’ involvement, but we nonetheless did visit the War Memorial Museum (name correct) in Seoul. I forget what tone the museum had towards the foreign aid to South Korea and Chinese help to N Korea in the war.
Great! I’ll clip it as an exceptionally good example of double standards. Frankly, he is not 100% wrong in both statements, but it is funny that in both cases he sees only the part which suits his own interests well. “The evil is if they steal my cattle. The good is if I steal their cattle”. Sometimes intellectual dishonesty can be truly hilarious, and this is one of such cases.
For a long time, Chinese textbooks and history books taught that it was the US and South that invaded the North. Some history-oriented websites now acknowledge that the North invaded the South, but justify the invasion as an act seeking reunification and fault US involvement. Chinese textbooks avoid admitting unpleasant details of history by simply ignoring them (I cite numerous examples to Chinese bloggers whenever they complain about Japanese textbooks). The middle school textbooks I have give the date of June 25, 1950, but do not state who invaded whom.
Ethnic Koreans have exposure to South Korean media and know that the North invaded the South. However, they (at least the ones I discussed this topic with) parrot the Chinese view that Kim’s invasion was an act to reunify a divided country and that US was wrong to participate in the war. Ethnic Koreans regard Kim Il-sung as heroic and Rhee Syngman as evil. Chinese history books celebrate the “lips and teeth” struggle against Japanese and US imperialism and some Korean liberation fighters from the Japanese colonial period remained in China and are respected as heroes.
Sonagi,
Had Japan not tried to illegally annex and then colonize Korea for the second time, along with China and Russia getting involved, the U.S. would not have had to be involved. Those issues aside, look at the post-war legacy Kim Il-Song provided the North Koreans — poverty, illiteracy, slavery, and supposedly concentration camps. How can anyone in their right mind deem Kim Il-Song’s actions as heroic?
Japanese textbooks? They all but claim they actually won WWII.
–Remort