The president’s recent mention of the “Hwandan Gogi” has brought the question of Japanese influence on Korean history to the fore. The text purports to tell the earliest history of Korea and is generally considered to be a clumsy forgery, but those who adhere to it accuse nonbelievers of being subject to Japanese versions of Korean history.
What does corruption of Korean historiography by the Japanese have to do with the text? Nothing, really. But if one questions the validity of the “Hwandan Gogi,” supporters of the text accuse critics of taking a Japanese colonial point of view and distorting Korean history. Sometimes they will straight-up call others “chinilpa,” meaning pro-Japanese or a Japanese collaborator.
Today, I thought I might take a look at what the “colonial” perspective on Korean history actually is. I think it will take more than one column — there’s probably a book or two to be written on the subject — but since the term is used and clearly abused, a brief examination would be a healthy start.
In my view, there are two categories of historical distortion perpetuated in the Japanese colonial period. One was intentional, denigrating Korea and Koreans by denigrating the history. The other was unintentional, using historiographic theories and interpreting them in a way that supported Japan while also putting down Korea.
Let’s look at the second before we look at the first, because the second was in some ways even more insidious than the intentional put-downs of Korea. Using historical theory to denigrate Korea seemed to provide a kind of intellectual legitimacy for heralding Japan. I’m thinking primarily of the evolutionary developmental schemes European authors invented, viewing history as a set of developmental “stages” through which societies would pass over time.
These stages started with what was sometimes called primitive or tribal societies, followed by development of statecraft and slave-holding societies, then feudalism, industrial development and finally the introduction of capitalism (or socialism, in some versions). In this model, Japan saw itself as higher on the evolutionary scale than Korea. Japan was proud of its feudal past and made comparisons to European feudalism. They believed that Japan, like Europe, developed industry and became a capitalist state with industrial power, with which they very occupied Korea.
Japan took over Korea formally in 1910, but they began with a series of “diplomatic” moves beginning in 1876. Step by step, Japan took more and more power away from Korea, and the country was lost.
At first, Koreans used their own names, spoke Korean, and published newspapers, magazines and books in Korean. But between 1931 and 1937, use of the Korean language in official settings was eliminated, and Koreans were forced to even give up their own names for Japanese ones. No more Kim. Now it was Kanezawa or Kanemoto (“kane” means money, making it an easy substitute for the common Korean surname, which means “gold”).
Some Koreans believed in this supposed “superiority” and began to cooperate with Japan. There were collaborators.
The intentional degradation of Korean history was sometimes subtle, sometimes outright racist. It was, for example, put about that the two great scholar-statesmen of Joseon era, Toegye and Yulgok, were rivals and their schools were part and parcel of factionalism plaguing the dynasty. The idea that they were rivals and signs of factionalism were exaggerated to make Korea look fractious and prone to turmoil. I was taught that if you have three Koreans, you have two factions. This is counter to the tremendous harmony that we see in Korea, but these are the ideas that grew out of the Japanese colonial era.
The proponents of the “Hwandan Gogi”, citing their forged text, claim that the Three Kingdoms of ancient Korea — Silla, Baekje and Goguryeo — were located in northern China and not on the Korean Peninsula. They also claim that there were no Han dynasty colonial outposts on Korean soil, but instead on Liaodong Peninsula in northeastern China, which they claim was once Korean. When Harvard archaeologists cite evidence of artifacts, and even Han-style tombs in Pyongyang, they push back, saying, “No, no, no! That’s a Japanese point of view.”
Everything that doesn’t conform to their fantasy is a Japanese point of view. It’s a handy excuse.
I think that scholars would do well to ferret out exactly which issues within Korean history are distortions laid out by the Japanese. There were some, but not nearly as many as proponents of the “Hwandan Gogi” think there are. This is something that can be researched and the results laid out for all to see. With better knowledge of which aspects of Korean history have been corrupted by the Japanese, the blanket accusation loses its bite.
Mark Peterson (frogoutsidethewell@gmail.com) is a professor emeritus of Korean studies at Brigham Young University in Utah. The views expressed here are his own.
AloJapan.com